Please understand something. God didn't create evil in the world, but He did create free will, which allowed for the possibility of evil. Science isn't like that. What you explore and find, God did create. It already exists. When you find it, you are discovering something God made. And everything God created is good. God said so in Genesis. He looked around at everything He had made and said, 'It is very good.'

After all, when 'the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become' He resolved to 'wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created ? and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground ? for I regret that I have made them' (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.

Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Genesis 18:14)

You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.

The best known of the Cynics was Diogenes, a pupil of Antisthenes, who reputedly lived in a barrel and owned nothing but a cloak, a stick, and a bread bag. (So it wasn't easy to steal his happiness from him!) One day while he was sitting beside his barrel enjoying the sun, he was visited by Alexander the Great. The emperor stood before him and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Was there anything he desired? ?Yes? Diogenes replied. ?Stand to one side. You're blocking the sun.?

Al?m disso, somos individualmente o produto de for?as que n?o escolhemos e que mal compreendemos. N?o escolhemos nossos pais nem a ?poca em que nascemos, e assim recebemos uma determinada heran?a gen?tica sobre a qual n?o temos controle algum, mas que, at? um ponto significante, tem controle sobre n?s. Essa heran?a determina, em parte, as doen?as a que somos suscet?veis e os limites de nossas capacidades intelectuais, atl?ticas e morais. Talvez n?o totalmente, mas o suficiente. Nascemos num ambiente que vai preencher o pouco espa?o que sobra do que foi determinado geneticamente, um ambiente que, novamente, n?o escolhemos e sobre o qual mal temos controle, pelo menos durante nossos anos de forma??o. A maneira como somos e aquilo que fazemos s?o resultados de nossos genes e nosso ambiente, que, juntos, exercem em n?s uma influ?ncia que compreendemos de forma bastante nebulosa. Era isso que os fil?sofos existencialistas, com Jean-Paul Sartre, por exemplo, queriam dizer quando afirmavam que somos jogados no mundo.

How could someone possibly be that beautiful? She wondered for the hundred thousandth time. What higher power orchestrated such a perfect union of genes? Who decided that one single solitary soul deserved skin like that? It was so fundamentally unfair.(Chasing Harry Winston)

The contrast between genetic and environmental, between nature and nurture, is not a contrast between fixed and changeable. It is a fallacy of biological determinism to say that if differences are in the genes, no change can occur.

From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari).

A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils.

Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the Gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the Gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.

What i'm trying to tell you," Min said, "is that im going to grow up to be one of those chubby old ladies. It's in my genes. Like self raising flour. i'm going to pouf.

I was conceived because it would be good for my House to have an heir and because my parents' genes ticked the right set of boxes. You were probably conceived because your parents loved each other.

On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.

There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

"The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

According to materialistic science any memory requires a material substrate such as the neuronal network in the brain or the DNA molecules of the genes.

And of course identifying all human genes and proteins will have great medical significance.

I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort of page-turner. I tend to care less about plot but I'm a sucker for humor and strangeness.

With our knowledge of modern-day genetics we realize that it was possible for God to place the potential for all people throughout history into the genes of Adam and Eve when He created them.

We can't understand when we're pregnant or when our siblings are expecting how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood genes humor. It means we were actually here on Earth for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids only with children.