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2004 : WHAT'S YOUR LAW? [1]

In the News [ 4 ] [2]
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Contributors [ 162 ] [3]   |   View All Responses [ 162 ] [4]
richard_dawkins's picture [5]
Richard Dawkins [5]
Evolutionary Biologist; Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford; Co-Author, with Yan Wong, The Ancestor’s Tale (Second Edition); Author, The Selfish Gene; The God Delusion; An Appetite For Wonder, Outgrowing God
Dawkins's Law

Dawkins's Law of the Conservation of Difficulty

Obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity.

Dawkins's Law of Divine Invulnerability

God cannot lose.

Lemma 1

When comprehension expands, gods contract—but then redefine themselves to restore the status quo.

Lemma 2

When things go right, God will be thanked. When things go wrong, he will be thanked that they are not worse.

Lemma 3

Belief in the afterlife can only be proved right, never wrong.

Lemma 4

The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely proportional to their defensibility

The following law, though probably older, is often attributed to me in various versions, and I am happy to formulate it here as

Dawkins's Law of Adversarial Debate

When two incompatible beliefs are advocated with equal intensity, the truth does not lie half way between them.

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Links:
[1] https://www.edge.org/annual-question/whats-your-law
[2] https://www.edge.org/inthenews/whats-your-law
[3] https://www.edge.org/contributors/whats-your-law
[4] https://www.edge.org/responses/whats-your-law
[5] https://www.edge.org/memberbio/richard_dawkins