"You'd be surprised what things manage to evolve on their own! Why couldn't the bacterial flagellum, that one seems pretty straightforwardly evolvable to me."

"Uh, it's been a long time since I had biology class-- basically there's no way they could have evolved without nonfunctional intermediates, which wouldn't have been preserved by natural selection? And stuff like that is all over nature."

"Nonfunctional intermediates are often surprisingly functional! Like, with eyes, even a few slightly photoreceptive cells are a huge advantage over total blindness, and then other structures accrue around the proto-eyes once there are enough photoreceptive cells for assistant structures to be a better mutation than More Photoreceptors. And flagella could have started out as little bumps on the surface of a cell, which might or might not serve any purpose but probably wouldn't be selected against, and then if you got any control over the bumps whatsoever you could use them to move a little, which is an advantage over not that, and then the bumps keep getting bigger. Intermediate stages in wings are often used for gliding, like with the flying squirrel, and kick off from structures which were used for something else."

"I guess you were there."

"A human brain can't store all those memories but I've been given condensed summaries."

"...Evolution is a horrible way to create an intelligent species."

"In general, do you prefer unworrisome generalizations, or depressing truths?"

"Depressing truths."

"God can't actually see the future. Humanity happened by accident, and God had to give up a chunk of her ability to affect Earth-as-opposed-to-Heaven in order to create a self-perpetuating system of souls so that humanity wouldn't just stop existing on the death of our bodies."

"I'm not sure that I would do better at running a universe."

"That's why 'on Earth as it is in Heaven' is an aspirational, not a fact of life. That's why religion; God regains power faster when people pay attention to Her."

"...I thought religion was a thing because humanity was made to love God."

"Loving God is a good thing! Loving people in general is a good thing."

"I'm glad there is literally anything about my religious education which is correct."

"I'm sorry. I really am."

"I get to be the first disciple of the Second Coming of Christ, it's not all bad."

"That's true. Man, I'm not having any luck with figuring out how to filter for good disciples from China, I'm probably going to have to disguise myself and wander around until I find someone good."

"You could try whatever you did to choose me?"

"Well, I met you."

"You caused an interdimensional bar to appear outside my front door?"

"No. That was a coincidence."

"I realize God can't see the future, but surely He governs the behavior of interdimensional bars."

"Well, if that's the case, it wasn't the me part of God."

"I guess if you could go to China the other part of God could try to arrange for you to run into a good disciple."