Pratchett wrote that he read the Old Testament as a child and "was horrified", but liked the New Testament and thought that Jesus "had a lot of good things to say ... But I could never see the two testaments as one coherent narrative." He then read "On" "the Origin of Species", which "all made perfect sense ... Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account." He said he had never disliked religion and thought it had a purpose in human evolution. In his novel "Nation", the protagonist says "It is better to build a seismograph than to worship the volcano", a statement Pratchett said he agreed with.