So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.

Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.

Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!

In the process of natural selection, then, any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius.