I might respect you as a brilliant intellect, runner, musician or juggler. But respect your BELIEFS? Only if they're supported by evidence.

The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist.

If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions choosing to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous.

Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.

Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose

If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment.