The replicators that exist tend to be the ones that are good at manipulating the world to their own advantage. But other replicators are also successful otherwise they would not be common. The world therefore tends to become populated by mutually compatible sets of successful replicators, replicators that get on well together

We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

Such a bandwidth! God, who may not have a brain made of neurons, or a CPU made of silicon, but if he has the powers attributed to him he must have something far more elaborately and non-randomly constructed than the largest brain or the largest computer we know.

Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.

The river of my title is a river of DNA, a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues

Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.

We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.