The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.

Outstanding examples of genius - a Mozart, a Shakespeare, or a Carl Friedrich Gauss - are markers on the path along which our species appears destined to tread.

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.

It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.

It seems to be a characteristic of all great work that it creators wear a cloak of imprecision.

In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth.