Quote by: Richard Dawkins

It is a tedious cliché (and, unlike many clichés, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with the word 'why' is a legitimate question. Why are unicorns hollow? Some questions simply do not deserve an answer. What is the colour of abstraction? What is the smell of hope? The fact that a question can be phrased in a grammatically correct English sentence doesn't make it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious attention. Nor, even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can.


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Author Bio


  • NameRichard Dawkins
  • DescriptionEnglish ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
  • AliasesClinton Richard Dawkins
  • BornMarch 26, 1941
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionEvolutionary Biologist; Ethologist; Science Writer; Popularizer Of Science; Essayist; Theoretical Biologist; Epistemologist; Sociobiologist
  • WorksThe Selfish Gene
  • AwardsFellow Of The Royal Society; Kistler Prize; Michael Faraday Prize; International Cosmos Prize; Lewis Thomas Prize; Shakespeare Prize; Humanist Of The Year