“It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.”

“Why would the disciples invent a God whose holiness was more terrifying than the forces of nature that provoked them to invent a god in the first place?”

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

“Overall, it seems now possible to draw a reasonably good explanation of why the human condition is a singularity, why the likes of it has occurred only once and took so long in coming. The reason is simply the extreme improbability of the preadaptations necessary for it to occur at all. Each of the evolutionary steps has been a full-blown adaptation in its own right. Each has required a particular sequence of one or more preadaptations that occurred previously. Homo sapiens is the only species of large mammal – thus large enough to evolve a human-sized brain – to have made every one of the required lucky turns in the evolutionary maze. (45)”

“A wise man once told me- he’s a muslim by the way- that he has more in common with a jew than he does a fanatic of his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or a Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a ration, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion”

“Do you suppose the human race invented boredom to make the prospect of death more palatable?”