Offense Is What People Take

Without Gradualness...we Are Back To A Miracle.

I Do Feel Visceral Revulsion At The Burka Because For Me It Is A Symbol Of The Oppression Of Women.

My Untidy Habits Drive Me To Follow The Slash-and-burn Principle. Work On A Virgin Table Until The Mess Becomes Unbearable, Then Move On To A Clean Table In A Clean Room - Or, On A Beautiful Summer Day Like This, One Of The Five Tables Dotted Around The Garden. Trash That Table And Move On Again.

I Think That's The Mother And Father Of All Cop-outs. It's An Honest Scientific Quest To Discover Where This Apparent Improbability Comes From. Now [francis] Collins Says, "well, God Did It. And God Needs No Explanation Because God Is Outside All This." Well, What An Incredible Evasion Of The Responsibility To Explain. Scientists Don't Do That. Scientists Say, "we're Working On It. We're Struggling To Understand."

Nowadays Theologians Aren't Quite So Straightforward As Paley. They Don't Point To Complex Living Mechanisms And Say That They Are Self-evidently Designed By A Creator, Just Like A Watch. But There Is A Tendency To Point To Them And Say 'it Is Impossible To Believe' That Such Complexity, Or Such Perfection, Could Have Evolved By Natural Selection. Whenever I Read Such A Remark, I Always Feel Like Writing 'speak For Yourself' In The Margin.