Saw this quote from fortune as my /etc/motd today:

"Evolution is a million line computer program falling into place by accident."

Even though I'm usually in favour of having some kind of context for pretty much everything I read, without it, that quote is unique in that those who do not subscribe to some kind of creationism myth and those who do can both agree on it.

Of course I think it is marvelous that we've evolved to the state we're in today after a few billion years and trillions to the trillionth power random chemical interactions...

Most Linux distributions have a neat little program that can be installed called fortune. It will give a short little inspirational quote, a saying, poetry, a joke, etc. The pool of fortunes is over 16,000 with a base install on Debian Etch.

Now the interesting thing is that there is another fortune package called fortunes-off. Offcolor, offbeat, offensive. Use your imagination. Being immune to all manner of inappropriate material, I of course installed it, and lo and behold, the first "offensive" (and randomly chosen) quote was as follows:

jamonation@scarab:~$ fortune -o
"Then there are those who really do believe, but take very good care to separate their religion off in a separate part of their mind. They don't let clashing thoughts ever literally clash. Either they do it by only thinking about religion on Sunday, or they somehow manage to keep their religious thoughts separate from their scientific ones. Those are the ones I find least easy to understand. And then, of course, there are those who just aren't very bright."
[Richard Dawkins, "A Trick of Light:
Richard Dawkins on Science and Religion"]