For Dawkins, Evolution Is A Battle Among

The Real Tragedy Of Human Existence Is Not That We Are Nasty By Nature, But That A Cruel Structural Asymmetry Grants To Rare Events Of Meanness Such Power To Shape Our History.

All Evolutionary Biologists Know That Variation Itself Is Nature's Only Irreducible Essence... I Had To Place Myself Amidst The Variation.

As We Discern A Fine Line Between Crank And Genius, So Also (and Unfortunately) We Must Acknowledge An Equally Graded Trajectory From Crank To Demagogue. When People Learn No Tools Of Judgment And Merely Follow Their Hopes, The Seeds Of Political Manipulation Are Sown.

If You Defend A Behavior By Arguing That People Are Programmed Directly For It, Then How Do You Continue To Defend It If Your Speculation Is Wrong, For The Behavior Then Becomes Unnatural And Worthy Of Condemnation. Better To Stick Resolutely To A Philosophical Position On Human Liberty: What Free Adults Do With Each Other In Their Own Private Lives Is Their Business Alone. It Need Not Be Vindicated And Must Not Be Condemned By Genetic Speculation.

It Is The Things We Think We Know - Because They Are So Elementary Or Because They Surround Us - That Often Present The Greatest Difficulties When We Are Actually Challenged To Explain Them.