The biggest delusion of all is that sterile matter could ever have changed itself into something living through natural selection. For the definition of "sterile" is precisely that it is the antithesis to any form of life. If the universe really did begin in a blazing mass of burning hot matter, then it would make no difference what material processes have occurred since that origin, for these processes would still be sterile today regardless of how many billions of years they had had to change into different processes. A machine is dead, no matter how complex it might become and the idea that we are machines is really the idea that all life is actually not alive at all, but only seems alive. The adherent to this kind of materialism has to ultimately deny their own personal vitality - they must conclude that they themselves are... sterile.
