The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more credible now than it was in Aristotle’s day.

My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life.

Physical science has progressed by leaving the mind out of what it tries to explain, but there may be more to the world than can be understood by physical science.

If life is not real, life is not earnest, and the grave is its goal, perhaps it’s ridiculous t otake ourselves so seriously.

Even if we acknowledge the existence of distinct and irreducible perspectives, the wish for a unified conception of the world doesn’t go away. If we can’t achieve it in a form that eliminates individual perspectives, we may inquire to what extent it can be achieved if we admit them.

To put it schematically, the claim “Everything is subjective” must be nonsense, for it would itself have to be either subjective or objective. But it can’t be objective, since in that case it would be false if true. And it can’t be subjective, because then it would not rule out any objective claim, including the claim that it is objectively false.

In every area of thought we must rely ultimately on our judgments, tested by reflection, subject to correction by the counterarguments of others, modified by the imagination and by comparison with alternatives.

It would be an advance if the secular theoretical establishment, and the contemporary enlightened culture which it dominates, could wean itself of the materialism and Darwinism of the gaps.

The most radical conclusion to draw from this would be that your mind is the only thing that exists.

Whatever one may think about the possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrine – that the appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing but the operation of physical law – cannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis.