Molecular genetics can show off some surprising relationships like, for example, the close relationship of whales to hippopotamuses, which I think nobody ever guessed until molecular data was looked at. The closest relatives of whales are hippopotamuses, even closer than any other cloven-hoofed animals.

We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticise it.

Scientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral. They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way.

I love romantic poetry.

It would be really worrying if, as a Darwinian, it was impossible to think of ways in which our behavior could be explained.

We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.

I shall not make an argument ad hominem. My argument is ad bullshitem.