I've got no problem with anybody's religion. But if you go claiming the Earth is only 10,000 years old, that's just wrong.

When we sit down to draw or paint the sun's rays, we generally use yellow because in the morning and the evening with the blue light scattered away so strongly you're left with a little bit of red and it comes out yellowish.

Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. The key to our being here now is time, 4.54 billion (Earth) years of time. Nuclear fission wasn't discovered until long after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace published their original books and papers, for example. Our ability to measure atomic masses wasn't developed until long after their deaths. These features of nature enabled us to reckon the age of the Earth and compare it with speciation rates here.

If we raise a generation of students who dont believe in the process of science, who think everything that weve come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, youre not going to continue to innovate.

I just want to remind us all there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious, who get enriched by the wonderful sense of community by their religion. But these same people do not embrace the extraordinary view that the Earth is somehow only 6,000 years old.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

Along with the evidence of common sense, researchers have proven scientifically that humans are all one people. We're a lot like dogs in that regard. If a Great Dane interacts (can we say interact?) with a Chihuahua, you get a dog.