I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.

The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.

We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.

I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.

'The Creation' presents an argument for saving biological diversity on Earth. Most of the book is for as broad an audience as possible.

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.

Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.

When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms and tiny invertebrate animals are unknown. Then you realize that we live on a relatively unexplored plan.

Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass.

All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.

Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.

An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.

I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it.

Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.

Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.

We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.

But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture.

Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.

In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.