If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining.

Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun.

Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.

This person should have been aborted years ago.

The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence … The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held to us as worthy of imitation.

Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life: his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. Not since David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up.

It's very important to try to inculcate into children moral rules, such as "do as you would be done by."