Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is ne...
Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
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...
Prosaic, pedestrian example, but everything
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.
Religions exist primarily for people to achieve together what they cannot achieve alone. —David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral
If nobody cares, then it doesn't matter what happens to flowers.
The case of the frogs is simply an artificially clear instance of what happens in natural selection all the time: exaptation—
That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.
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...
The more you have invested in your religion, the more you will be motivated to protect that investment. Stark
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.
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...
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT ARITHMETIC IS.