I'm A Sucker For Nice Religious Leaders.

The Human Psyche Has Two Great Sicknesses: The Urge To Carry Vendetta Across Generations, And The Tendency To Fasten Group Labels On People Rather Than See Them As Individuals. Abrahamic Religion Gives Strong Sanction To Both-and Mixes Explosively With Both. Only The Willfully Blind Could Fail To Implicate The Divisive Force Of Religion In Most, If Not All, Of The Violent Enmities In The World Today.

Scientists Disagree Among Themselves But They Never Fight Over Their Disagreements. They Argue About Evidence Or Go Out And Seek New Evidence. Much The Same Is True Of Philosophers, Historians And Literary Critics.

Science Replaces Private Prejudice With Public, Verifiable Evidence.

But What, After All, Is Faith? It Is A State Of Mind That Leads People To Believe Something - It Doesn't Matter What - In The Total Absence Of Supporting Evidence. If There Were Good Supporting Evidence Then Faith Would Be Superfluous, For The Evidence Would Compel Us To Believe It Anyway. It Is This That Makes The Often-parroted Claim That 'evolution Itself Is A Matter Of Faith' So Silly. People Believe In Evolution Not Because They Arbitrarily Want To Believe It But Because Of Overwhelming, Publicly Available Evidence.

Charles Darwin Made Arguably The Greatest Discovery Any Human Has Ever Made. He Was A Man Of Great Persistence. He Wasn't Probably A Natural Genius, He Worked Very Hard - Even Though He Was An Invalid. He Was A Great Family Man, A Very Nice Man. I Think He Was Admirable In All Sorts Of Ways.