Peter Atkins famous quotes

03-28-2025

A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation. Elephants, for instance. Once molecules have learnt to compete and to create other molecules in their own image, elephants, and things resembling elephants, will in due course be found roaming around the countryside ... Some of the things resembling elephants will be men.
-- Peter Atkins

#Men #Elephants #Needs
Any argument that asserts that 'God did it' is a sign of a lazy mind.
-- Peter Atkins

#Mind #Lazy #Argument
Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation.
-- Peter Atkins

#Ignorance #Atheism #Tautology
We are children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.
-- Peter Atkins

#Children #Heart #Roots
Chemistry begins in the stars. The stars are the source of the chemical elements, which are the building blocks of matter and the core of our subject.
-- Peter Atkins

#Stars #Block #Elements
Truth is not arrived at by majority vote.
-- Peter Atkins

#Majority Vote #Majority #Vote
Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion?
-- Peter Atkins

#Powerful #Simple #Thinking
Science is almost totally incompatible with religion.
-- Peter Atkins
I regard teaching religion as purveying lies.
-- Peter Atkins

#Lying #Teaching #Teaching Religion
Well it's fairly straightforward: there isn't one [a god]. And there's no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don't believe that there is one. And I think that it is rather foolish that people do think that there is one.
-- Peter Atkins

#Believe #Thinking #People
The emergence of consciousness, like the unfolding of a leaf, relies upon restraint.
-- Peter Atkins

#Rely Upon #Consciousness #Unfolding
My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations.
-- Peter Atkins

#Ideas #Needs #Arguing
The challenge of elucidating living processes -- including consciousness and all its baggage which we bundle together as 'the human spirit' -- is only one example of a challenge where hard work is paying off and science does not need to accept the false explanations peddled by religions.
-- Peter Atkins

#Hard Work #Challenges #Together

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