The Dogmatist Within Is Always Worse Than

It Seems The Height Of Antiquated Hubris To Claim That The Universe Carried On As It Did For Billions Of Years In Order To Form A Comfortable Abode For Us. Chance And Historical Contingency Give The World Of Life Most Of Its Glory And Fascination. I Sit Here Happy To Be Alive And Sure That Some Reason Must Exist For "why Me?" Or The Earth Might Have Been Totally Covered With Water, And An Octopus Might Now Be Telling Its Children Why The Eight-legged God Of All Things Had Made Such A Perfect World For Cephalopods.

'creation Science' Has Not Entered The Curriculum For A Reason So Simple And So Basic That We Often Forget To Mention It: Because It Is False, And Because Good Teachers Understand Exactly Why It Is False.

[t]ruly Grand And Powerful Theories [...] Do Not And Cannot Rest Upon Single Observations. Evolution Is An Inference From Thousands Of Independent Sources, The Only Conceptual Structure That Can Make Unified Sense Of All This Disparate Information. The Failure Of A Particular Claim Usually Records A Local Error, Not The Bankruptcy Of A Central Theory. [...] If I Mistakenly Identify Your Father's Brother As Your Own Dad, You Don't Become Genealogically Rootless And Created De Novo. You Still Have A Father; We Just Haven't Located Him Properly.

The Essence Of Darwinism Lies In Its Claim That Natural Selection Creates The Fit. Variation Is Ubiquitous And Random In Direction. It Supplies Raw Material Only. Natural Selection Directs The Course Of Evolutionary Change.

I Picture Several Reviewers Of My Own Books As Passing A Long Future Lodged Between Brutus And Judas In The Jaws Of Satan.