"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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Faith is the force of action.

I will keep smiling, be positive and never give up! I will give 100 percent each time I play. These are always my goals and my attitude.

Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.

In movies we tend make things black and white: you're either this, or you're that.

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.

Eat what you like, but dress for other people.

The universe is limitless and so are you. There is a limitless supply of good that the universe wants to show you. Step out of the way and let it be!

When it comes to letting people marry whomever they love, Mitt Romney says, "No."

The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.