I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.

Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think-though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one-that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.

Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

Jesus makes large claims for his heavenly father but never mentions that his mother is or was a virgin, and is repeatedly very rude and coarse to her when she makes an appearance.

Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.

In modern Greek history, there is a close relationship between national humiliation and political radicalization.