Islamic myths are mostly actually plagiarized from the Christian ones, both biblically and in terms of modern creationism. If you read Islamic creationist literature, it's pretty much lifted from American evangelical literature.

If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.

I'm not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship.

The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur. When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance.

Pope Francis seems to be a much nicer man than Pope Benedict, but I'm not sure that his views on things that really matter are all that different. Whereas Benedict was perhaps a wolf in wolf's clothing, Francis is perhaps a wolf in sheep's clothing.

It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will.

Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection.