Maybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.

The universe doesn't owe you a sense of hope

The recurrent laryngeal nerve - which runs from the head to the voice box - goes all the way down into the chest, loops around a major artery, then goes all the way back up again. It goes right past the larynx on the way down. All a decent designer would have to do is loop it off at that point. What we're looking at is the legacy of history.

But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.

I don't want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn't matter, because that still doesn't mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.