"That biological evolution has an arrow -- the invention of more structurally and informationally complex forms of life -- and that this arrow points toward meaning, isn't, of course, proof of the existence of God. But it's more suggestive of divinity than an alternative world would: a world in which evolution had no direction, or a world with directional evolution but no consciousness. If more scientists appreciated the weirdness of consciousness -- understood that a world with sentience, hence without meaning, is exactly the world that a modern behavioral scientist should expect to exist -- then reality might inspire more awe than it does."

"On modern blues: Me and the modern blues scene, we have difficulty getting on. I sometimes get the feeling that it’s all sixth-form college: ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that.’ A lot of modern blues is acade…"

"People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question: we are born into a world that presents us with many millennia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask…"

"But the reader must particularly observe, that by the word “ soul” I do not mean precisely the same thing as most persons do—the general opinion of believers in soul being that it is the spirit of the…"

"Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it’s simply meaningless. We don’t live in order to die, we live …"