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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.

For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.

Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.

Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.

Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.

In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

Because the living environment is what really sustains us.

The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.

Monday night, there ain't a better time to showcase your talent.

My dad would leave at 4 or 5 in the morning and then I wouldn't see him until evening. The conversations we used to have, he would tell me, 'A man takes care of his home first. A man handles his responsibility. He doesn't ask another man for anything.'

I always know how to play this game. It's about being smart.

Football has always been a contact sport, and it's always going to be a violent sport, and there are going to be repercussions from that. But every player that ever played this game and will play this game, they're signing up for it.

Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.

I want to be the best, but it comes with a lot of work. And it can be pressure if you put it on yourself in that way. But if I keep going the way I'm going, and with the good Lord guiding me the way he's been guiding me, and the way I let him take control of my life, the sky is the limit.

The old G's, or the gangsters, turned me away from the street because they knew my dad, and they had a lot of respect for my dad, but because I was an athlete.

I know I have the abilities to be a head coach or D-coordinator. It's something I wouldn't mind doing. But it's tough being a player and going back and doing something like that, because egos get in the way.

Especially in black communities, we've been so groomed to stay where we are and not like people in the other neighborhoods. It's crazy. It won't allow people to experience life and see what the world truly has to offer. People are stuck in their ways, stuck in their communities, stuck on their streets.

When kids grow up into adults now... they learn that taking care of their body is like taking care of their car. You're not going to put bad gas into your car. Why not treat your body the same way? It makes all the sense in the world for us to do the right thing for our bodies.

We always said it's not suit-and-tie on the football field.

Working out is a part of life.

We tend to want to stay here in Louisiana as Louisiana people. We've just got to be mindful that there are other things out there, and we really need to open our kids' minds to get them to go to college. Get them to get away. Then come back and help the next ones behind us.

When you play sports, when you're on a team with people from different walks of life, and you have to look after each other and count on each other, race and all that stuff goes out the window when you are in the locker room.

It wasn't about accolades, but showing that I was bred and predestined to be one of best football players to come into the league - and, every Sunday, to help my team to win.

You don't hear about tradition in the NFL, but we have a tradition in Baltimore. It was just an awesome place to be.

Help each other, encourage each other, lift each other up.

There's not many people - only really the great ones - who realize what they were born to do.

I've been treated with the utmost respect by the whitest of white guys, and I've been treated bad by the whitest of white persons. I've been treated bad by the blackest of black persons and treated good by the blackest of black persons. So at the end of the day, I know it's about humanity - do you have a good heart or a bad heart?

Pretty much just stay humble. And continue to work hard and let the game come to me and try not to make even more plays or jump plays. Just let the game come to me and play my defense and my responsibility.

When you've been playing the game for so long and sports for so long, it can take a toll on your body, and that's what we're putting on the line, and that's what our argument is as players when we're doing negotiations and stuff like that.

We all played sports, my brothers, my daddy, my uncles. That's all we had.

Not every officer is a bad police. I work with police officers. I know first responders.

Just being from Louisiana, being from the southern part of Louisiana, Metairie, close to New Orleans and growing up in St. Rose. There are a lot of things to overcome.