Biologists From England

"Richard Dawkins is quite simply incomparable. No one can make science so exciting, so interesting, or so clear... If only Stephen Hawking had a tenth of his clarity."

"I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years."

"The question is whether there can be any progress of the mind in a secular world. That is to say, if we turn away from the ethical teachings of Christ, or for that matter Muhammad, what is left to guide us? What incentive do we have to be good if there is no afterlife? The problem that militant atheists confront, including recent popularisers of atheism like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, is that there isn’t really a very good answer to that."

"A psychologist colleague, on reading a draft of this essay, asked if The Selfish Gene is considered required reading in any philosophy graduate program. Certainly specialists in the philosophy of science or philosophy of biology would be expected to have read it, but what about students of epistemology or philosophy of mind or language? We philosophers are a somewhat conservative lot, loath to grant that anybody but a professional philosopher could write something worthy of entry into the canon. If you put The Selfish Gene on the required reading list, just which ‘classic’ would you bump from the list to make room for it? I have seen enough philosophy students enthusiastically tell me how they were transformed by reading the book to judge that it pulls its weight and then some, so yes, I put Dawkins’ book alongside classics by such non-philosophers as Turing and Kuhn as essential thinking tools for any student of philosophy. In addition to everything else they will learn from it, they will discover that it is actually possible to write arguments that are both rigorous and a joy to read. That discovery, if enough philosophers took it to heart, could transform our discipline."

"I haven't lived with the author of The Selfish Gene for nearly twenty-five years but I have lived in close and constant contact with the book itself since before it was published. Its words and figures of speech are thrown at me almost daily from student essays. The questions it raises are the driving force behind the most successful tutorials and the sound of pennies dropping as each new generation of students takes in the extraordinary implications of what the book is saying, is as loud now as it ever was. The Selfish Gene seems to occupy a unique place in biological writing. Some books, like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, herald a new age and have a huge impact on the way people think at the time but thereafter are read mainly for historical interest. Others form part of an ongoing movement but are soon superseded by more up-to-date versions or more fashionable means of expression. But if The Selfish Gene had not been written when it was, there would still be a need for it to be written today. There are simply no books that have taken its place, even now when so many other books have followed in its wake."

"We are now ready to survey afresh the battlefield of the sexes. With The Selfish Gene as our guide, we can compile a gene-centred inventory of any participants that we come across. There are the principal antagonists: ‘male’ and ‘female’ genes in conflict and the resulting multifarious adaptations in male and female creatures. There are the victors and victims that we would otherwise have missed: the agents of genomic imprinting, visiting the feuds of the previous generation upon the children. There are the subversive opportunists: mitochondria waging their own private war against nuclear genes over their mitochondrial mausoleum, the male parts of plants. And there are the innocent bystanders: victims of collateral damage from other’s battles, such as drowned and poisoned females. So the banner of the battle of the sexes should depict not a spider’s quietus in his lover’s jaws nor the withered anthers of a flower; for they represent other concerns of genes. Nor need it depict struggle or pain, injury or death. It could instead portray the dazzling beauty of the peacock’s tail, the deep intimacy of the titis’ embrace, the finely poised equilibrium that builds a newborn baby. Such are the ways of genes that even their conflicts—‘male’ against ‘female’ genes—can appear deceptively to us as harmony and beauty in their bearers."

"Dawkins is a master of setting up a straw man, then dismantling it with great relish. In fact, it is hard to escape the conclusion that such repeated mischaracterizations of faith betray a vitriolic personal agenda, rather than a reliance on rational arguments that Dawkins so cherishes in the scientific realm"

"All the biology that Dawkins tries to present as modern biology is no such thing... the idea of the selfish gene is an idea against biochemistry, against genetics which tells us that the DNA does not replicate itself, that it's not divided by itself, that it's divided by enzymes, that you have to take into account not only the genome; you also have to take into account the -ome, a whole system in which we can distinguish but not separate the different elements. That's why Dawkins has been so successful; science fiction is sold much better than scientific works."

"Supreme Court rules that a woman is legally defined as . . . a woman. Congratulations. And “The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man”. Yes, the science was settled in the Precambrian. Nice that the law has finally caught up."

"The buzz words of the campus—diversity, inclusion, microaggression, power differential, white privilege, group safety—have become the buzz words in public life. Already confusing on campus, they become noxious off campus."

"Science is not a social construct. Science’s truths were true before there were societies; will still be true after all philosophers are dead; were true before any philosophers were born; were true before there were any minds, even trilobite or dinosaur minds, to notice them."

"When I tweet on politics, even if I merely post a url, I get many replies like “Stick to science. Politics is not your field.” Which field, then, does qualify one to hold a political opinion? Are scientists specifically disqualified from thinking & caring about the world?"

"National pride has evil consequences. Prefer pride in humanity. German pride gave us Hitler, American pride gave us Trump, British pride gave us Brexit. If you must have pride, be proud that Homo sapiens could produce a Darwin, Shakespeare, Mandela, Einstein, Beethoven."

"Don't call him "clock boy" since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!"

"You know you've won the argument when the only counter argument they can find is that you are white or male or old."

"Islam needs a feminist revolution. It will be hard. What can we do to help?"

"University is about confronting new ideas, unfamiliar, un-"safe". If you want to be "safe" you are not worthy of a university education."

"Eugenics was not inspired by Darwin's natural selection but by ancient agricultural ARTIFICIAL selection. Eugenics is UNnatural selection."

"Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice."

"Mild paedophilia is bad. Violent paedophilia is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of mild paedophilia, go away and learn how to think. Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think."

"Suggest always put Islamic "scholar" in quotes, to avoid insulting true scholars. True scholars have read more than one book."

"Who (apart from the pig) is damaged by bacon?"

"I've seen a dog & bitch indulging in full 69. Males of many species including Drosophila lick female genitals before copulation."

"If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!"

"Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste."

"Saw a down-and-out in Seattle last night. His sign said not "I need food" or "I need a job" but "I need a fat bitch". What could this mean?"

"All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."

"Don't ask God to cure cancer & world poverty. He's too busy finding you a parking space & fixing the weather for your barbecue."

"I hate the neologism "owned" for "scored a victory over". I have no intention of owning anyone, and nobody will ever own me."

"I'm told theology is outside my field of expertise. But is theology a "field" at all? Is there anything in "theology" to be expert ABOUT?"

"With respect to those meanings of "human" that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig."

"Haven't read Koran so couldn't quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam greatest force for evil today"

"Some states, e.g. "pregnant", are all-or-none, no intermediates. But sexual abuse has shades of grey, from violent buggery to mild touching."

"Those people who think sexual abuse is a black-or-white, all-or-none category are incapable of clear, logical thought."

"It is very good that Wikipedia also gives a page to "Internet Meme". Internet memes are arguably the most important subset of memes today"

"In the case of immigrants from Syria and Iraq I would like to see special preference given to apostates, people who have given up Islam, they are in particular danger."

"I'm all for offending people's religion. I think it should be offended at every opportunity"

"If you're seen to criticise Islam you are often accused of racism, which is absurd."

"People are terrified of being thought racist, there's an awful confusion in many people's minds. They think Islam is a race, which of course it isn't"

"I think there really is a place for science in literature and I think that may be increasing"

"We're too stupid to decide on EU (that includes me)"

"[...] my interest in biology has been largely driven by questions about origins and the nature of life, rather than – as is the case for most young biologists I have taught – by a love of natural history."

"We don't need fossils – the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution"

"Ingenious? Yes. And scrupulous. Really good scientists have to be both."

"A body is a patchwork of compromises."

"Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips... continue the list as long as desired."

"Sceptical rational inquiry is always the best approach. [...] we can think independently, be truly open-minded. That means asking questions, being open to real corroborated evidence. Reason has liberated us form superstition and given us centuries of progress. We abandon it at our peril."

"The idea that ancient equal years of accumulated wisdom is a fallacy. [...] In medicine, 'ancient' also means developed before we understood the causes of disease, before germ theory. It was based on ignorance then and age makes it no truer. We misguidedly look back to a golden age that never was; ours is the golden age of safe tested medicine, effective beyond placebo, in which we've cut infant mortality and conquered diseases, then forgotten they existed."

"If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests."

"Isn't Deepak Chopra just exploiting Quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus?"