Evolution Is Fundamentally Hostile To Religion.

Steve Grand Is The Creator Of What I Think Is The Nearest Approach To Artificial Life So Far, And His First Book, Creation: Life And How To Make It, Is As Interesting As You Would Expect. But He Illuminates More Than Just The Properties Of Life: His Originality Extends To Matter Itself And The Very Nature Of Reality. Not Since David Deutsch's The Fabric Of Reality Have I Encountered Such A Compelling Invitation To Think Everything Out Afresh, From The Bottom Up.

I Think A Fundamentalist Is Somebody Who Believes Something Unshakably And Isn't Going To Change Their Mind.

There Is A Popular Cliché ... Which Says That You Cannot Get Out Of Computers Any More Than You Have Put In..., That Computers Can Only Do Exactly What You Tell Them To, And That Therefore Computers Are Never Creative. This Cliché Is True Only In A Crashingly Trivial Sense, The Same Sense In Which Shakespeare Never Wrote Anything Except What His First Schoolteacher Taught Him To Write-words.

There Is An Attitude In The Culture That Says That Everybody Is Entitled To Their Opinion. You Got To Respect Their Opinion. No, You Damn Well Haven't Got To Respect Their Opinion.

Christianity, Just As Much As Islam, Teaches Children That Unquestioned Faith Is A Virtue. You Don't Have To Make The Case For What You Believe. If Somebody Announces That It Is Part Of His Faith, The Rest Of Society, Whether Of The Same Faith, Or Another, Or Of None, Is Obliged, By Ingrained Custom, To "respect" It Without Question; Respect It Until The Day It Manifests Itself In A Horrible Massacre Like The Destruction Of The World Trade Center, Or The London Or Madrid Bombings.