Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.

You can never be absolutely certain that anything doesn't exist. But you can show that it's unlikely.

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 split into three main groups when faced with science. I shall label them the "know-nothings", the "know-alls", and the "no-contests."

There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

The thing that defines a species is that all members have the same addressing system for their DNA.

Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that.