The other way is the multiverse way. That says that maybe the universe we are in is one of a very large number of universes. The vast majority will not contain life because they have the wrong gravitational constant or the wrong this constant or that constant. But as the number of universes climbs, the odds mount that a tiny minority of universes will have the right fine-tuning.

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

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.

Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.

Religious people are atheists about all other gods, atheists only take it one god further.

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

There is great variation in brain power all the way from Einstien on one hand to Sarah Palin on the other.