To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter. But I think it's very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff.

It's amazing how relaxing it is not to claim you know more than you do. I'm surprised that those who claim to speak in the name of god don't take more advantage of this relief.

By trying to adjust to the findings that it once tried so viciously to ban and repress, religion has only succeeded in restating the same questions that undermined it in earlier epochs. What kind of designer or creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is so cruel and indifferent? And - most of all - what kind of designer or creator only chooses to "reveal" himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?

I think the cultural task is to separate our impulses and needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

I'm terrified of losing my voice.