There Are People In The World Who

I Don't See That [richard] Dawkins' Basic Account Of Evolution Is Incompatible With God's Having Designed It.

I Hate The Neologism "owned" For "scored A Victory Over". I Have No Intention Of Owning Anyone, And Nobody Will Ever Own Me.

Does Religion Fill A Much Needed Gap? It Is Often Said That There Is A God-shaped Gap In The Brain Which Needs To Be Filled: We Have A Psychological Need For God -- Imaginary Friend, Father, Big Brother, Confessor, Confidant -- And The Need Has To Be Satisfied Whether God Really Exists Or Not. But Could It Be That God Clutters Up A Gap That We'd Be Better Off Filling With Something Else? Science, Perhaps? Art? Human Friendship? Humanism? Love Of This Life In The Real World, Giving No Credence To Other Lives Beyond The Grave?

I Suspect The Reason Is That Most People [...] Have A Residue Of Feeling That Darwinian Evolution Isn't Quite Big Enough To Explain Everything About Life. All I Can Say As A Biologist Is That The Feeling Disappears Progressively The More You Read About And Study What Is Known About Life And Evolution. I Want To Add One Thing More. The More You Understand The Significance Of Evolution, The More You Are Pushed Away From The Agnostic Position And Towards Atheism. Complex, Statistically Improbable Things Are By Their Nature More Difficult To Explain Than Simple, Statistically Probable Things.

The List Of Things About Which We Strictly Have To Be Agnostic Doesn't Stop At Tooth Fairies And Celestial Teapots. It Is Infinite. If You Want To Believe In A Particular One Of Them - Teapots, Unicorns, Or Tooth Fairies, Thor Or Yahweh - The Onus Is On You To Say Why You Believe In It. The Onus Is Not On The Rest Of Us To Say Why We Do Not. We Who Are Atheists Are Also A-fairyists, A-teapotists, And A-unicornists, But We Don't Have To Bother Saying So.