We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.

We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.

You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home... Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism.

But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.

Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.

In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on Earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the Ninth Configuration. But, given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would take for just one of these protein molecules to appear by chance? Roughly 10 to the 243rd power, billions of years; and I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in a god.

I lived in Georgetown in the late 70s about four houses down from the steps.