You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that at least some of that variation is inherited - and the syllogistic inference is natural selection.

What's important is that all human knowledge be made available to all intelligent people who want to learn it.

Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. If I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant.

We must [it has been arued] go beyond reductionism to a holistic recognition that biology and culture interpenetrate in an inextricable manner.

Science is not 'organized common sense'; at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition.

The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. It in fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism.

Everything comes to us in fifteen-second sound bites and photo opportunities. All possibility for ambiguity - the most precious trait of any adequate analysis - is erased.