Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
So deeply ingrained is the unconscious northern hemisphere chauvinism in those of us who live there, and even some who don't. 'Unconscious' is exactly right. That is where consciousness-raising comes...
There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point. [...] Somebody...
There is no reason to regard God as immune fromconsideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there iscertainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neitherproved nor disproved,...
Next to the true beauty and magic of the real world, supernatural spells and stage tricks seem cheap and tawdry by comparison. The magic of reality is neither supernatural nor a trick, but – quite sim...
More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh...
It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will.
If you don't understand how somethingworks, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don'tknow how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understandhow memories are laid down in the brain? E...
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fund...
A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance
If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We r...
With only a little imagination we can see the gene as sitting at the centre of a radiating web of extended phenotypic power.
Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferociousdefence? One might have supposed him amply capable of lookingafter himself.
The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago:...
The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence … The other apostles, whose faith was so...
The book is true, and if evidence seems to condtradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out not the book.
Sözcükler bizim hizmetkârlarımızdır, efendilerimiz değil.
Science doesn't have all the answers, but it is good at spotting the important questions when they are camouflaged against a background of common sense.
Pat Robertson would be harmless comedy, were he less typical of those who today hold power and influence in the United States.