As a wedding present to ourselves, my wife and I bought the DVDs of the original Star Trek, and these past few months, we've been working our way through them. For myself, it was a test: I hadn't seen most of these episodes since my childhood, and I was curious to see if they held up. I'm pleased to say that, for the most part, they more than hold their own. There's plenty to criticize, but after all this time, it hasn't lost its charm.

Despite everything that makes me roll my eyes about Star Trek - the dated special effects, the hammy acting, the hackneyed plots, the ludicrous science - there's a powerful heart of optimism beating beneath the surface of the show. The idea that human beings have conquered our own divisions and become united as a species, that we're setting out to explore the universe purely for the sake of exploration, that we've become members of a galactic civilization of intelligent life - for all these reasons, the world of Trek could be fairly described as a utopian vision of humanist philosophy. And that's why it's no surprise that Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, was himself a humanist and a nonbeliever.

As Susan Sackett, Roddenberry's longtime personal assistant, put it to a humanist group in Massachusetts:

Ms. Sackett said that Star Trek, like humanism, promoted ethics, social justice and reason, and rejected religious dogma and the supernatural.... She said Mr. Roddenberry, who lectured in Worcester in the 1990s, strived in his Star Trek ventures to affirm the dignity of all people.

"Rationality was the key... There was no recourse to the supernatural," she said.

Ms. Sackett said Roddenberry was so resolute about religion that he refused suggestions to add a chaplain to the crew of the starship Enterprise.

And Roddenberry himself said:

"I have always been reasonably leery of religion because there are so many edicts in religion, 'thou shalt not,' or 'thou shalt.' I wanted my world of the future to be clear of that." (source)

Brannon Braga, one of the original writers and producers, expressed similar thoughts at a 2006 atheist conference in Iceland:

STAR TREK, as conceived by Gene Roddenberry, portrays the epic saga of humanity's exploration of space and, in turn, their own struggles as a species. Every episode and movie of STAR TREK is a morality tale in which human beings find solutions to conflict through enlightenment and reason. Through science. Through wit and intellect. Through a belief in our potential as animals that can supercede our baser instincts. In Gene Roddenberry's imagining of the future (in this case the 23rd century), Earth is a paradise where we have solved all of our problems with technology, ingenuity, and compassion. There is no more hunger, war, or disease. And most importantly to the context of our meeting here today, religion is completely gone. Not a single human being on Earth believes in any of the nonsense that has plagued our civilization for thousands of years. This was an important part of Roddenberry's mythology. He, himself, was a secular humanist and made it well-known to writers of STAR TREK and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION that religion and superstition and mystical thinking were not to be part of his universe. On Roddenberry's future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it.

Star Trek's humanist ethic comes through clearly in several classic episodes, including "Who Mourns for Adonais?", in which the crew of the Enterprise is confronted by an alien being who claims to be the god Apollo and demands their worship; or the Next Generation episode "Who Watches the Watchers?", in which the crew's existence accidentally becomes known to a primitive society, and they must convince those people that they are not gods.

With all that said, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Star Trek has spawned its own devotees who follow and imitate the show with an almost religious fervor. But even this, I think, is testimony to the hunger for an optimistic, humanist vision of the future, one not based on the supernatural, and that's the kind of thing that all atheists should be doing our utmost to provide.

Other posts in this series:

• The Contributions of Freethinkers

If you're a regular reader, you probably know that I got married last month. Until now, I haven't said much about the event itself on Daylight Atheism. But now that I'm back from my honeymoon (slightly sunburned, but happy!) and I've had some time to reflect, I wanted to put into words some of my thoughts on what marriage means to me, as an atheist, and explain why I chose to enter into it.

But first of all, let me address the most obvious question: Should an atheist even want to get married? Isn't marriage an intrinsically religious ceremony? After all, weddings usually take place in churches (yes, ours was in a church) and are conducted by clergy (yes, we had a minister - more on this in a minute). Doesn't that mean that a committed atheist should refuse to enter into one?

I do acknowledge that, for most of Western history, marriage has been performed in a religious context. However, I don't concede that this makes it an intrinsically religious ceremony. Rather, it's because organized religion has always tried to take exclusive possession of whole areas of human life, and proclaim that it alone owns these experiences which are common to everyone. Just so in this case: marriage is fundamentally an expression of love, and religion doesn't have a monopoly on love. Atheists seek companionship, fall in love, and pledge our commitment just as theists do. Why, then, should we not mark the occasion with a marriage ceremony? Why not take the ritual, strip out the religious trappings we don't accept, and reclaim it as a secular, human rite of passage that nonbelievers also participate in?

And that's just what my wife and I did with our wedding. We planned the ceremony to match our beliefs, keeping the traditions we accept, omitting or changing the ones we didn't. We've been attending a Unitarian Universalist church for the past year, an entirely dogma-free religion that emphasizes ethics and community and has no requirement that its members believe in God or anything supernatural. The ceremony was at Shelter Rock, a huge, gorgeous UU congregation on the north shore of Long Island, and was performed by our minister, Hope, a wonderful woman whom both of us respect deeply.

So then, back to my original question: Why did I, as an atheist, choose to get married?

First, there are the practical reasons. It sounds tactless to mention, but I'd be lying if I said I never thought of it: Marriage isn't just a religious rite, but a civil ceremony that brings considerable civil and legal benefits, including many that are impossible to obtain any other way.

Of course, these protections are held out as an incentive to couples like us, even as they're denied to gays and lesbians. That these civil benefits are denied to mature, consenting same-sex couples due to religious prejudice is something both my wife and I feel passionately is a grave injustice. That's why we chose the following passage to be read at our wedding. It's an excerpt from Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, the case where the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to forbid marriage to same-sex couples. Even in the dispassionate language of the court, this ruling was full of poetry:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.

The union of two people is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any.

Without question, civil marriage enhances the welfare of the community and is a social institution of the highest importance. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and a connection to our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

But there was more to my decision than this. Although the civil benefits of marriage are non-trivial, even without them we would have gotten married anyway, and the last paragraph of that ruling hints at why.

I said that atheists feel love just like everyone else, but I want to say more than that. I believe that love is the quintessential human emotion, the one that most truly defines us, that inspires all our noblest endeavors, and that gives expression to what is best in humanity. But love, by its nature, demands to be shared. If kept secret, it stagnates into mere obsession; but if shared with others, it is multiplied. Like one candle lighting others, it spreads without diminishing its source, and brings greater joy to every person who partakes of it than any of them could have had alone.

This reasoning is both why I got married in the first place, and also why we had a ritual to mark the occasion. I believe that life's challenges are better confronted together, rather than alone, and a two-person partnership is the simplest and most stable way to accomplish that.

At the most fundamental, our marriage isn't a civil ceremony or a religious rite, but a mutual obligation, a promise given freely and in awareness of its weight and solemnity. We pledged to make our partnership an enduring one, to remain faithful and true to each other, to share our happiness and support each other in times of trouble. And it makes this pledge all the more weighty that we made it not to each other in private, but before our gathered family, friends, and loved ones. We invited them to be there because we wanted them to bear witness to our decision, but also because we wanted to share our joy with them!

My wife and I have both found much good in our partnership: we complement each other's strengths, we comfort each other in times of pain and sorrow, we challenge each other to grow and mature, and we've each found that the things we love separately are even sweeter when shared. And that, more than any other reason, is why an atheist like me got married: because when you're in love, you want to tell the world.

And it's in that spirit that I'll close out this post. We wrote our own vows for the ceremony, and if you'll forgive me, I'd like to share mine:

Dear MissCherryPi,

Before we say our vows, I want to tell you why I'm here today.

You know that there are some things I don't believe in. But today, I want to tell you about some things I do believe in.

I believe in sunrises and sunsets.

I believe in hikes in the woods and walks on the beach.

I believe in traveling the world and exploring places we've never been before.

I believe in good books, good conversation and laughing at shared jokes.

I believe in picking pumpkins in autumn, decorating the tree for Christmas and drinking champagne on New Year's.

I believe in watching fireflies on summer evenings and stargazing on dark clear nights.

I believe in all the beauty, the mystery and the wonder of life, and I believe that these joys, like all joys, are multiplied when you have someone to share them with. And I'm here because I want you to be that person.

There's no one else I'd rather spend my life with. I love your shy smile, your sweet laugh, your sense of humor, and your adventurousness. And most of all, I love the way you make me happier than I thought anyone ever could. That's why I'm here, and that's why I'm marrying you today.

By Richard Hollis (aka Ritchie)

The most magical Christmas I can remember happened when I was, maybe, 12 or 13.

It had certainly been many years since I had believed in Santa, and in all honesty I don't actually remember ever sincerely believing in him at all. Maybe it was something to do with not having an open fireplace, or my parents being terrible liars, or perhaps my older brother had something to do with it. Or perhaps, as I am inclined to suspect, a child's belief in Santa is less genuine than we adults care to imagine. A game of make-believe is practically second nature to a child, and if they get presents at the end, I'm sure they'll happily play along with anything.

But in any case, presents still were the icing on the cake of Christmas. But this one particular year, something absolutely unprecedented happened - both my brother and I actually slept right through the night and were woken up by our shocked and bewildered parents on Christmas morning! For the first time we had not been motivated enough to arm ourselves with torches, books, puzzles and coffee (yes, coffee) in a bid to evade our wily sentinel parents and raid the Christmas tree for presents. One year we even oiled squeaky door hinges! There have been bank heists planned with less military precision.

This particular morning, however, the whole family sat in the living room together and shared presents. We didn't greedily claim them like pirate bullion, but shared them, and took an active interest in what everyone had bought each other. We had bought and given these gift because we love each other, and had taken the time, effort and expense to do it. And I can distinctly remember thinking it was the best Christmas morning I'd ever had - Christmas without Santa really is somehow more magical.

I'm not saying I won't tell stories of Father Christmas to my own children, should I have any. I probably will. But, crucially, I would also expect them to grow out of that belief in time. Learning to think, to reason, and to interact with others in an adult way is an essential part of growing up. Stories and make-believe games may help them to learn these lessons, or be a crutch until they have, but eventually these intellectual stabilizers need to come off.

It would be another ten (ish) years before I let go of my belief in God. And yet the feeling when I finally did so was hauntingly familiar. A world in which humans alone have been responsible for our greatest works of art, acts of altruism and acts of love really is, I believe, more magical than one in which these gifts are were dispensed from above like some temperamental cosmic cash machine.

Contrary to the belief of those who will, I am sure, find this incomprehensible, belief in God, like a belief in Santa, needs to be laid aside to truly appreciate the other people around us. He is simply a barrier to a life more magical.

And don't even get me started on Rudolph!

I've written on the meanings of freethought and secularism, and in the third entry of this series, I want to discuss humanism. More so than the other two, humanism is a complex and fully formed life philosophy, so it'll take the most effort to adequately define.

Most concisely stated, humanism is the worldview which treats human beings - our lives, our needs, and our concerns - as of supreme importance. Humanism recognizes our deep and profound interconnection with the natural world and with all living things on Earth, yet it values human beings above all else - not because of unjustified bias, but because that humans are the only living beings who are moral agents: the only ones who are able to reason out the consequences of their actions and choose to act based on that evaluation. Other animals lack that moral competence, and so regardless of what considerations we owe them, they are not of equal importance with us.

On the other side of the scale, humanism gives greater weight to human concerns than to matters of faith or dogma. To a humanist, the decree of a religious authority, scripture, or creed can never take precedence over the life and well-being of a conscious, feeling person. This doesn't mean that a humanist must be an atheist; there are theistic humanists, although in my experience, the secular kind is more common.

Statements like the Amsterdam Declaration and the Humanist Manifesto have defined in detail what humanists believe. My interpretation of the tenets of humanism would add the following:

Humanism is strongly ethical. The most fundamental principle of humanism is that all human beings are equal in moral worth and dignity. By virtue of being conscious, reasoning, foresightful beings, we gain the privileged status of personhood that confers us with rights; and we likewise incur a responsibility to treat others in accordance with this principle. Thus, we should refrain from doing harm or oppressing others, and to the greatest degree possible, we should respect their freedom to make their own choices and lead their own lives as they see fit. Humanists believe that morality is not a matter of following the decrees of authority, but of the sense of conscience that every person possesses, guided and informed by reason.

Humanism is rational and undogmatic. Humanists hold that no belief is too sacred to question, and are always willing to engage in self-examination, to revise our prior beliefs in the light of new evidence, and to accept newly discovered truths. More fundamentally, humanism supports free inquiry in all its forms and opposes censorship in all its forms. Humanists recognize the scientific method as the most reliable and effective method of gaining knowledge about the world, though we don't discount the value of art, music, literature and other modes of cultural expression to bring people to recognition of truths they had overlooked.

Humanism is both individual and collective. Although people's freedom to choose their own course is of paramount importance, humanists also recognize that we are social creatures, and that we find the greatest fulfillment by interacting with others and joining communities based on a shared identity or common interests. Although solitary geniuses and entrepreneurs have contributed to human progress, the greatest works of artistic creativity and intellectual achievement have come about only through connection in a shared culture.

Humanism encourages us to turn our attention to this world. As part of respecting the freedom and dignity of individuals, humanists seek to build a society where all people can flourish to their greatest extent. In addition to ethical behavior on the level of individual interactions, then, humanists are willing to contribute to the greater good, to devote their efforts toward creating a freer, more rational, more just civilization. Where we see injustice, we seek to correct it; where we see evil and tyranny, we battle against it; where we see senseless waste and destruction, we work to put a stop to it.

Humanism encourages the full development of human potential. It states that human nature is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically evil, but that we have instincts that tend in both directions. Through education and training, we can learn to encourage the better instincts and rechannel the worse ones. Although the project of moral education is a difficult undertaking, it's a worthy and important one. Humanists recognize that the improvement of society's attitudes benefits all people who live in it, and only through this means can we end poverty, war, climate change and other global threats that demand collective effort to solve.

Most Americans have heard of the movie critic and writer Roger Ebert. But what most people probably didn't know - what I didn't know - is that he hasn't been able to eat, drink or speak since 2006. That was the year when most of his jaw had to be surgically removed, the result of complications from thyroid cancer that nearly cost him his life. This information comes via a surprisingly moving article in Esquire by Chris Jones, which describes how Ebert's life has been altered by his illness. And the reason I bring it up is this:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled "Go Gently into That Good Night." I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

Despite losing his voice, Ebert has penned an eloquent and articulate stream of thoughts on his own blog, which is now his primary window on the world. Even while he refuses to accept the usual labels, he defines himself in lucid and beautiful terms that any secular humanist would recognize immediately:

I wrote an entry about the way I believe in God, which is to say that I do not. Not, at least, in the God that most people mean when they say God. I grant you that if the universe was Caused, there might have been a Causer. But that entity, or force, must by definition be outside space and time; beyond all categories of thought, or non-thought; transcending existence, or non-existence. What is the utility of arguing our "beliefs" about it? What about the awesome possibility that there was no Cause? What if everything...just happened?

...But certainly, some readers have informed me, it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don't feel that way. "Faith" is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever.

..."Kindness" covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

Though Ebert isn't in imminent danger of death, his illness has brought him to recognize more clearly that we all must die eventually, and that what matters most about our lives is what we did with them - whether we cultivated happiness in ourselves, as well as in others. Even in spite of our misfortunes, we can still find reason for joy:

There is no need to pity me, he writes on a scrap of paper one afternoon after someone parting looks at him a little sadly. Look how happy I am.

Ebert's thoughts, and the Esquire article, are written with a gentle, luminous courage that I've rarely seen. This is true spirituality: not clinging to the false comfort of myths interpreted literally, but solace in human kindness, memories of the good things in life, and accepting frailty and mortality with quiet resolve. It's the kind of powerful and moving affirmation of secular humanism that I wish everyone could see more often.

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled flame war for this important announcement.

As everyone has no doubt heard, Haiti was hit by a colossal earthquake last night; the city of Port-au-Prince is in ruins, and tens of thousands of people may be dead. If you're able to help, please consider making a donation to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. And if simple human compassion doesn't move you, consider it doing it to spite that wicked, heartless old fraud Pat Robertson, who said that the people of Haiti got what they deserved for rebelling against slavery. His religion made him evil; now, for Haiti's sake, I hope that our atheism makes us good.

UPDATE: I'm proud to see that atheist organizations are joining the effort. As commenters have mentioned, there's the Foundation Beyond Belief. The American Humanist Association also has a relief fund, and the FFRF has made a donation to Doctors Without Borders.

For the holiday season, some goodies this weekend:

• First up, some music for the season: the blogger Lirone, of Words That Sing, in collaboration with William Morris, composer in residence at the British Humanist Association (did you know the British Humanist Association had a composer in residence? me neither!), has written a humanist carol, Gathering Round the Fire. It's 99 cents on iTunes, and all profits will go to the BHA. I downloaded and listened to it, and I enjoyed it greatly. Check it out, support a good cause, and lend a little bit of humanist cheer to your holiday gathering!

• Next, CNN has a surprisingly sympathetic interview with Richard Dawkins on evolution and atheist advocacy.

• The Daily Mail's Andrew Alexander offers a "heartfelt plea for atheism", an eloquent essay only slightly marred by an ignorant passage about climate change.

• Hanna Rosin asks whether the prosperity gospel contributed to the economic crash.

• On Daily Kos, it's a shameful day for the Irish Catholic Church, as a long-awaited report is released about the complicity of the bishops in sex abuse by predator priests.

• And finally, from Time, an unsparing essay about the subjugation and abuse of women in Islamic countries. (Did you know a Saudi Arabian woman has no legal proof of her existence besides her name on her husband's ID card? I didn't.) This is the kind of thing that the New Atheists get called "shrill" and "strident" when we write.

Also, you may have noticed that posts on Daylight Atheism are now classified by tag in addition to the six major categories (also, there's a tag cloud). I implemented this as a result of suggestions in the reader feedback thread, and I've been working my way backwards tagging older posts. Before I go further with that, I'm interested if people have any opinions on it. Too many tags? Too few? Are some missing that you'd like to see included? Personally, I'm still considering whether to add the "Science" tag to the posts on Lee Strobel.

November is a good month for poetry.

Most great poetry is about transience, and with autumn in full swing, there's much in November to inspire the poet's thoughts on that topic: the last yellow and brown leaves raining from the trees; the early fall of dusk as the days continue to shorten; the gray skies and cool days as the first taste of winter frost becomes perceptible in the air, and the world settles in for its yearly sleep.

While I was walking in the leaves the other day, I had a minor inspiration. It occurred to me that there's a common thread woven through religious belief. The theists, in their apocalyptic dreams and mirages, long for something that's eternal and unchanging: God's eternal kingdom, the city with gold walls and gates of precious stones, or C.S. Lewis' heaven that opens like an onion, each layer more beautiful than the last. Or, more ominously, the worm that never dies, the fire that's never quenched, or Dante's vision of the damned being boiled forever in rivers of blood, frozen in perpetual ice and snow, or trudging in endless circles so they can be hacked to pieces by demons on each pass.

Either way, what the Earth's major monotheisms teach us to desire is permanence: a world immutably fixed in its course, never to change again. They want the race to be run, the final victory to be attained, and all strife and toil ended. They want existence sorted and classified so that they'll never know pain or loss again, while their enemies will suffer in infamy for all eternity.

But as we learn from the autumn leaves, that isn't the way of nature. The world does not trade in permanence, but in perpetual rebirth and renewal.

Observe nature, and you'll see this pattern at every level. Mountains are thrust up and then worn away to nothing. Rivers and streams flow to the sea, become choked with life and silt up, and then fan out and cut new courses across the landscape. Deserts and grasslands sweep back and forth, impinging on each other's boundaries. Plants sprout in the spring, bloom in the summer, die in the fall, and are reborn after the winter. Even within our bodies, new cells are always being created as old ones are destroyed and recycled. In every case, what we see is rebirth and renewal - not a state of changeless stasis, as the religious wish for, but a constant, dynamic tension between destruction and rebuilding; an endless flux of old forms passing away as new ones arise.

In fact, we owe our very existence to such a process. Though a seamless thread of historical continuity links all of us to the very first life on Earth, there is no single molecule, no single cell that has come down to us intact from that moment of genesis. What has been passed down is a pattern, a template of information constantly being copied from one physical substrate to another, constantly being born again with each generation - although, because of the ceaseless scouring and reconstructing of evolution, not even that pattern has survived unchanged.

Knowing that we are part of nature, that our lives are also evanescent swirls in the great river of change, is not a vision that everyone finds reassuring. Hence, sermons like this one, which assures hearers,

...we know death is wrong. It was never part of God's plan for creation. You were made to last forever. God designed you in his image to live forever.

This is a view that animated bits of carbon may be expected to take. We're anxious to convince ourselves that we are exempt from the rules that apply to all other living things, that our destiny is not like theirs, and it's no surprise that theologies which fulfill our fantasies with promises of immortality and endless bliss have found millions of takers. But all the soothing platitudes in the world can't change the fact that, despite all that we're capable of, we too are like those autumn leaves. We bloom and burst into full color; in our heyday, we're fiery and beautiful; and then, ultimately, we fade, fall away, and are gone. Henceforth we belong to memory, and it's left up to future generations to continue the work of humanity.

The apologists of religion often accuse atheists of being arrogant, but is it not they who truly lack humility? Is it not they who believe that they are special, set apart, above the rest of nature? Is it not they who believe that although trees fall, mountains erode, and even stars die, that they will live eternally, that they are not part of nature's ceaseless ebb and flow?

There are those who would say that this viewpoint, this recognition of our transience, is a reason to despair. Unless our lives are endless, so they say, we must feel hopeless. That, too, is a claim that I deny.

The knowledge that our time is brief is not a reason to fix our gazes with dread on the end, but to ground our vision in hope for the present. Knowing that we will not be here forever, we have the strongest possible incentive to make the most of what time we have, and to live with happiness and fulfillment of purpose. Our time is finite, so let us use it wisely, and dazzle the world with what we can accomplish before we go. That, too, is the lesson of the autumn leaves.

This past summer, I was visiting the New York Botanical Gardens when serendipity struck: this beautiful little creature alighted on a stone railing around the edge of a pool, staying just long enough for me to snap this shot:

I think, though I'm not an expert, that this is a blue dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis.

I don't usually like close-up photos of insects - they have an eerie, alien feel that I find disturbing. (I admit it, I'm a mammal chauvinist.) But this one is one of the rare exceptions. Looking at it again, it's hard for me not to feel admiration for this sleek, graceful creature.

With its iridescent blue scales, its impossibly frail and transparent wings, its delicate jointed legs, it scarcely seems to belong to nature at all. It looks almost like a device, a tiny whirring clockwork machine made by some detail-obsessed jeweler - except, of course, that we humans haven't yet learned to make machines of such fine and precise workmanship, nor any that pack so many marvelous capabilities into such a small package.

So much of its head is taken up by those huge, gorgeous compound eyes, it seems it has scarcely any room for a brain to process the information they take in. Yet dragonflies have keen eyesight, and are blurringly fast and acrobatic fliers - and imagine how well-tuned their organs of balance must be, to control their pitch, roll and yaw in three-dimensional space at such speeds, a task that would overwhelm a human vestibular system. And though they seem so clumsy, so fragile - adult dragonflies can only fly, not walk, and their wings can't be folded in like a beetle's but must be held out at all times - on their own small scale, they are fearsome and effective predators. And of course, like all living things, dragonflies have one more astounding ability that human-designed devices can't match: they can make copies of themselves from the raw materials of their environment!

All in all, despite all our brains, we humans can't create anything nearly as clever, as intricate, as adaptable, or as beautiful as a dragonfly. But we shouldn't feel too bad: when it comes to forging machines, we've had barely a few hundred years of practice. Evolution has had hundreds of millions of years to refine its designs, to hone and sharpen them against the ruthless grindstone of natural selection. With that much of a head start, and with all the resources of a planet to use for trial and error, it's no wonder that even this blind algorithm produces results of a beauty and craftsmanship we can't match.

And yet, the stunning truth is that we ourselves are products of the same evolutionary process. Look at your hands, your arms, and imagine tens of millions of years of natural selection pushing and tugging on them like a sculptor kneading clay, slowly molding flesh and bone into new shapes. Imagine the skeins of DNA coiled in your cells, woven out of evolution like a tapestry from a loom. Imagine the unbroken chain of your ancestors stretching back into the misty recesses of time, each one only subtly different from the last - but even subtle changes add up, until you reach a point, untold millions of generations ago, where the ancestral lines of human and dragonfly merge into the same track.

This knowledge should fill us with awe. The fact of universal common descent via evolution means that I and this glittering blue dragonfly, no matter how distant the links, are related. When I snapped that picture, it was a family reunion, of sorts - and the admiration I felt for its intricacy and beauty is the same kind of admiration I'd feel for any talented relative whose glory reflects, even if only a little, on his siblings and cousins.

The human species is like a hiker who, having scaled a long and arduous path, can finally stop at a vantage point and look back on the journey he's taken. Looking out across the landscape, we can see our fellow travelers, each one taking a different course from all the rest, all of them spreading out from a single point of origin in the far distance. Why should we not feel a sense of kinship for all the other beings who are traversing life's winding, contingent paths along with us? And why should we not marvel all the more that our astonishing existence is not the result of deliberate planning, but of a glorious, messy, freewheeling cauldron of chance?

I should have mentioned this story much earlier, but better late than never.

If you're an atheist and a regular reader of sci-fi and fantasy, you probably know the name Terry Pratchett - and if you don't, you should. He's the award-winning and much-loved author of Discworld, a series of fantasy novels set in a flat, circular world that's carried through space on the back of a giant tortoise. Discworld began as a straight-up parody of other fantasy novels, but it's moved on to parodying all different aspects of our culture, and doing so in the midst of surprisingly deep and affecting storytelling. Pratchett is also an atheist, and many of the Discworld books (including my personal favorite, Small Gods) show the virtues of atheism and humanism - no small feat in a riotous fantasy world where, as the author puts it, "the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows".

And if you're a fan of Pratchett, you may also know that in December 2007, he announced he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease - a grim prognosis, since the early-onset form of the disease tends to be the fastest-developing, and treatment options tend to do no more than delay the spread. As Pratchett himself said, "I know three people who have successfully survived brain tumors but no one who has beaten Alzheimer's."

Although he's still writing and still cheerful, Pratchett has said in recent weeks that he does not believe in "a duty to suffer the worst ravages of terminal illness", and that when the time comes when he faces an irreversible disintegration of self, he would rather end his life on his own terms:

Now, however, I live in hope - hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall.

...I am enjoying my life to the full, and hope to continue for quite some time. But I also intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod - the latter because Thomas's music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven - and perhaps a second brandy if there is time.

Oh, and since this is England I had better add: 'If wet, in the library.'

In recent weeks, he's also spoken out against assisted-suicide guidelines which appear to leave open the possibility that citizens of the U.K. could be prosecuted for murder for helping a terminally ill loved one take their own life.

Of course, I hope Terry Pratchett, despite the diagnosis, has many more years of happy and productive life ahead of him (and not just for my own selfish reason of wanting to read more of his books!). I hope with all my might that a cure for Alzheimer's will be found in time. But when my time comes, as it will for all of us, I hope to face the inevitable even half as well as he has this far: with good humor and courage, a fearless self-determination to take my destiny into my own hands, and a hope that some greater good can come about from individual tragedy.

And I'm encouraged to believe that comfort and acceptance in the face of mortality may not be as hard to come by as people think (or as religious proselytizers would like us to believe). There have been many freethinkers who exited life in peace and dignity, such as Edward and Joan Downes, whose story I mentioned this past July. It's likely that the more high-profile examples there are of atheists peacefully coming to terms with the inevitable, the more common and accepted it will be, and the easier it will become for all of us.