Commonsense lets us down, because commonsense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast, and nothing is very small or very large; the mundane world of the familiar.

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.

...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.

I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.

Yesterday's dangerous idea is today's orthodoxy and tomorrow's cliché.

Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.

Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.