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All life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...more

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Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, w...more

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The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

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So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. ...more

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Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things like crystals and rocks are really almost entirely composed of empty space....more

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Science - or the products of science like technology - is just a way of achieving something real, something that happens, something that works.

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I am passionate about the truth. Passion is very different from fundamentalism.

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Religion is a distraction from true education.

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It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they...more

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There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.

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Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

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Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam.

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Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

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It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and...more

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A biochemist colleague has kindly provided me with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and enough hydroquinone for 50 bombardier beetles, I am now about to...more