It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.

We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there's no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it's an artefact from times long gone.

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