I believe in God; therefore, I’m religious. My father is Jewish, my mother Christian, and I was raised in a Presbyterian church in western New York state, USA. At present, I often go to Anglican church services (or “Evensong”) at various colleges within my university, and the music is excellent. I’m not a fundamentalist or evangelical of any denomination, and I do not believe that every word in the Bible is an unfiltered indication of His Divine Will. However, for all of its human-caused mistakes, I believe the Bible has a lot going for it. It encourages humility and love, and it asks you to recognize your imperfections, put the needs of others ahead of your own, and as a general rule, treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. In my own intuitive, unscientific way, I think this core message is divinely inspired.

I’m also a paleontologist. That is, I’m an academic who studies evolutionary biology for a living, and I’m particularly interested in the fossil record of mammals. This profession has enabled me to observe firsthand just how right Charles Darwin was about how all mammals share a biological history among themselves and with other forms of life on this planet. At no point has this observation led me to a spiritual “crisis,” or to the feeling that God and Darwin are somehow antagonistic. It would have if I equated “God” with superstition or a literal reading of Genesis, but I don’t. Biblical literalism was nonsense long before Charles Darwin came on the scene.