"At the beginning there was nothing but a big ball of gases. For a long time it just sat there in the nothingness, getting hotter and hotter. Then it exploded. The explosion created the stars, which were burning bubbles of the first big ball of gases. The stars threw out chunks of debris. They cooled and became planets. The planets spun round and became round.

"In a remote and insignificant sector of the universe, one planet fell into an orbit around its star that by accident made its surface conducive to the molecular formations known as amino acids. Neither so close to their planet's star as to incinerate, nor so far from it as to be frozen, the acids survived and proceeded to combine into new molecules of a complexity advanced enough to permit change, growth, meiosis and the development of certain other transient characteristics of a generic nature classifiable as life.

"Changing and growing and reproducing in response to random stimuli and the planet's chemistry, life thrived, multiplied and spread from the hospitable environment of liquid oxygenated hydrogen where it began, to the more challenging environment of the planet's solid mineral masses. The new environment stimulated further molecular changes that enabled living organisms to increase in size and complexity. The organisms grew bigger and bigger, then much bigger until some of the many life forms on the planet's surface were so enormous as to be dinosaurs.

"The dinosaurs were gigantic scaly beasts with small brains and large appetites for plants and each other. Created by numerous accidents of evolution, the dinosaurs managed to become extinct not by accident but by their own stupidity. The dinosaurs ate all of the plants in their environment and soon starved. When the dinosaurs became extinct, smaller life-forms became dominant on the planet's surface.

"These other life-forms were mammals which had hairy bodies, warm blood and small brains that were nevertheless larger than the brains of the dinosaurs. Over a long period of time after the dinosaurs became extinct, the hairy bodies of the mammals grew bigger and bigger until there were many large animals on the planet's surface. And some of these were very big indeed and something like elephants. And some of them were something like cattle. And some of them were something like pigs. And others of them were quite small and something like rats and cats and dogs. And a lot of them were a lot like monkeys.

"And the ones that were like monkeys had brains that were quite large. And some of these grew quite big and lost their tails so that they were no longer monkeys but apes. And the apes thrived and multiplied, surviving even unto the present age. And with the coming of the apes, the beginning of Earth ended."