I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art.

While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.

No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.