Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?

How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration.

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.

As agonizing a disease as cancer is, I do not think it can be said that our civilization is threatened by it. ... But a very plausible case can be made that our civilization is fundamentally threatened by the lack of adequate fertility control. Exponential increases of population will dominate any arithmetic increases, even those brought about by heroic technological initiatives, in the availability of food and resources, as Malthus long ago realized.