Richard Dawkins writes in his book Unweaving the Rainbow:
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
Adam Lee marvels at the evolution of his own genetic makeup:
Unlike the believers who explain in all sincerity that their myths are "true but not real", our origin story is both true and real. And it's far grander and more majestic than the small, unimaginative, human-centered myths of antiquity. Just think of what it implies about our interconnectedness: the pulsing of a jellyfish's bell, the coordinated swerve of a school of fish, the dapple of sunlight through a redwood's vast green canopy, the explosive colors of a coral reef, the hidden biospheres in sulfuric hot springs and frozen Antarctic lakes – all of them are kin to me.
(Photo by Flickr user Giorgos)
The Dish 
