The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance.

If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?

A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.

The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

There is never only ONE of anything in nature.

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?