Earlier attempts to show that simpler theories always have higher prior probabilities have failed, but there is a restricted circumstance in which the claim is right.

The big picture, I think, is that common ancestry is evidentially prior to natural selection in Darwin's theory and in contemporary evolutionary biology as well.

Deism claims that God creates the universe and the laws of nature and then is hands-off, with everything that subsequently happens in nature being due to natural processes.

I think that the existence of Beethoven is remarkable, but I do not bristle at the suggestion that this event had a low probability given the initial state of the universe.

Biologists now pretty universally regard vitalism as a vestige of a bygone age.

When one theory is simpler than its competitor, this fact is relevant to saying what the world is like.

In many contexts, simplicity is not an aesthetic frill.

Scientists often seek predictively accurate models, rather than models that are true.

Our own species evolved under the influence of group selection, as Darwin emphasized when he discussed the evolution of altruism.

"Tiger is a natural kind" and "Tiger is a historical particular" are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

I disagree with the widely held view that it is metaphysical necessity, not nomological, that matters in the mind/body problem.

If every one of us spreads the message of love, compassion, kindness and forgiveness, peace will be there.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

Not feeling compassion for a stranger is like not feeling when one's foot has caught fire

The life you are living is your creation, your perception of reality that you can change at any time.

We can have Americans eating affordably and eating in a way that's sustainable.

I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship.

Poison's not bad. It's a matter of how much.

Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.

I think if I had lived back in Salem, I would have been burned at the stake