I think we should stop treating [God works in mysterious ways] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, Oh good! I lov...
WELCOME TO THE PHENOM Suppose
My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my...
In this section I have tried to demonstrate that Darwinian thinking does live up to its billing as universal acid: it turns the whole traditional world upside down, challenging the top-down image of d...
Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.
To compose a successful critical commentary: 1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting i...
That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.
Those who feel guilty contemplating betraying the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so l...
So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missed—and Darwin provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could...
Asked by a student for an example of infectious cultural junk that is hard to eradicate, I replied, Well, it's like, when, like, you use a phrase which, like, isn't really, like, doing any serious wor...
The more you have invested in your religion, the more you will be motivated to protect that investment. Stark
If I burst into a house and yell to all assembled, Put on the kettle! I have uttered an imperative English sentence, but some will probably infer that I would like to have a cup of tea or other hot be...
When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn’t work in that way—so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!
The case of the frogs is simply an artificially clear instance of what happens in natural selection all the time: exaptation—
One reader of an early draft of this chapter complained at this point, saying that by treating the hypothesis of God as just one more scientific hypothesis, to be evaluated by the standards of science...
You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no...
There is no future in a sacred myth. Why not? Because of our curiosity. (...) Whatever we hold precious, we cannot protect it from our curiosity, because being who we are, one of the things we deem pr...
Religions exist primarily for people to achieve together what they cannot achieve alone. —David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral
Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT ARITHMETIC IS.