The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.

At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?

If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.

I don't know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you'll be the first to find out.