We have to treat others as part of who we are, rather than as a 'them' with whom we are in constant competition.

"Nothing is ever lost" means that what we are now goes all the way back through natural history. We are biological organisms and not simply computerized brains. By focusing totally on the present, thinking only about science and computers, and forgetting four billion years of life on this planet, we are losing perspective on who and what we are.

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

The central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but in our animal, biological past.

That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

One of the important things about religion is that it is a sphere which is partially protected from selection. Religious creativity occurs when people pull out of the whole selectivity issue. Becoming celibate - obviously you couldn't be less selective that that. Yes, selection is always in the background. But it's not always there in the foreground. If you don't understand that, you're missing a lot.

Yet Buddhism is four hundred years older than Christianity, and if it's not a universal religion I don't know what a universal religion is. There's also a strong focus on selectionism and the notion that religion plays a functional role in the evolutionary process. But religion is dysfunctional all the time, as well as functional. It's not so simple.