If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.

It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.

And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people's minds.

The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have.

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.