Home > Author > Michael Ruse
1 " I mean, I think even God would agree with this at this point. God’s existence isn’t important. It’s what we do with what we’ve got that counts. "
― Michael Ruse
2 " Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint -- and Mr. Gish [Duane T. Gish the Creation Scientist] is but one of many to make it -- the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. "
3 " The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn’t really there. And the definition of a theologian is he’s somebody who finds it. "
4 " Thomas Henri Huxley often preached tolerance, but in practice he could not wait to go after religion and religious people in the most scornful of terms.[Curb your enthusiasm,2016] "
5 " The New Atheists believe that science replaces the claims about the world that religion makes — and therefore makes religion redundant. Some of them think that a whole new moral system should be based on science. That’s sounding more and more like religion itself to me. But the other unsettling way in which Humanism imitates religion — and perhaps the most notable one in the case of the New Atheists — is its claim that people who do not share its beliefs are not only mistaken but also deluded and perhaps even evil. The line I quoted above about opposition to evolution being a sign of insanity and possibly wickedness comes, of course, from Richard Dawkins.[Curb your enthusiasm] "
6 " So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion.[Is Darwinism a Religion? - Michael Ruse] "
7 " And yet I, and others of my ilk, am reviled in terms far harsher than those kept for the real opponents like the Creationists. We are labelled ‘accommodationists’ for our willingness to give religion a space not occupied by science. We are put down in terms that denote powerful emotion, way beyond reason. In The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, I am likened to Neville Chamberlain, the pusillanimous appeaser of Hitler. Jerry Coyne, the author of both the book and the blog Why Evolution is True and an ardent fan of Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, wrote about one of my books in terms used by George Orwell: ‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’ The Minnesota biologist PZ Myers, who writes the blog Pharyngula, has referred to me as a ‘clueless gobshite’. And if I had a dollar for everyone who has made a pun out of my last name, I would be a very rich man. Because I will not toe the line absolutely or bow down in praise of Dawkins and company, because I laugh at their pretensions and positions, I am anathema maranatha.[Curb your enthusiasm] "
8 " [t]he Darwinian argues that morality simply does not work (from a biological perspective), unless we believe that it is objective. Darwinian theory shows that, in fact, morality is a function of (subjective) feelings; but it shows also that we have (and must have) the illusion of objectivity. (Ruse 1998, 253; emphasis mine) "
― Michael Ruse , The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics (Cambridge Handbooks in Philosophy)
9 " Fifth, I think that you [Daniel Dennett] and Richard are absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design — we are losing this battle, not the least of which is the two new supreme court justices who are certainly going to vote to let it into classrooms — what we need is not knee-jerk atheism but serious grappling with the issues — neither of you are willing to study Christianity seriously and to engage with the ideas — it is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil, as Richard claims — more than this, we are in a fight, and we need to make allies in the fight, not simply alienate everyone of good will.""William Dembski. "Remarkable exchange between Michael Ruse and Daniel Dennett" "2006 "
