We Should Learn To Understand Natural Selection,

For Centuries The Most Powerful Argument For God's Existence From The Physical World Was The So-called Argument From Design: Living Things Are So Beautiful And Elegant And So Apparently Purposeful, They Could Only Have Been Made By An Intelligent Designer. But [charles] Darwin Provided A Simpler Explanation. His Way Is A Gradual, Incremental Improvement Starting From Very Simple Beginnings And Working Up Step By Tiny Incremental Step To More Complexity, More Elegance, More Adaptive Perfection.

I Do Like Philip Pullman.and That's An Exception Because Philip Pullman's Books Allow Magic.

Natural Selection Is The Blind Watchmaker, Blind Because It Does Not See Ahead, Does Not Plan Consequences, Has No Purpose In View. Yet The Living Results Of Natural Selection Overwhelmingly Impress Us With The Appearance Of Design As If By A Master Watchmaker, Impress Us With The Illusion Of Design And Planning.

Our Leaders Have Described The Recent Atrocity With The Customary Cliche: Mindless Cowardice. Mindless May Be A Suitable Word For The Vandalising Of A Telephone Box. It Is Not Helpful For Understanding What Hit New York On September 11. Those People Were Not Mindless And They Were Certainly Not Cowards. On The Contrary, They Had Sufficiently Effective Minds Braced With An Insane Courage, And It Would Pay Us Mightily To Understand Where That Courage Came From. It Came From Religion.

My Decision To Be A Scientist Was A Bit Of A Drift Really, More Or Less By Default.