There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.

If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.

I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.

With respect to those meanings of 'human' that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig.