Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense.

Precise adaptation, with each part finely honed to perform a definite function in an optimal way, can only lead to blind alleys, dead ends, and extinction.

Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

I emphatically do not assert the general 'truth' of this philosophy of punctuational change. Any attempt to support the exclusive validity of such a grandiose notion would border on the nonsensical.

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

We are storytelling animals, and cannot bear to acknowledge the ordinariness of our daily lives.

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.