When the responses elicited by the Epic of Evolution are gathered together several religious principles emerge that I can believe, serve as a framework for a global Ethos.

The concept of an independent "spiritual realm" does not augment, for me, the magic of the mystical dimension, whereas to think of this dimension as emergent from our minds makes it all the more wondrous to be a human.

Human memory, they say, is like a coat closet: The most enduring outcome of a formal education is that it creates rows of coat hooks so that later on, when you come upon a new piece of information, you have a hook to hang it on. Without a hook, the new information falls on the floor.

We are embedded in the great evolutionary story of planet Earth, the spare, elegant process of mutation and selection and bricolage. And this means that we are anything but alone.

The most reliable joy is to be out of doors, to be a creature among other creatures. I find it very restful.

The Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum can summarize: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."

Human consensus does not generate reality. Were it able to do so, the Sun would have taken to orbiting the Earth some time ago.