2004 : WHAT'S YOUR LAW?
Evolutionary Biologist; Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford; Author, Books Do Furnish a Life
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.
