In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.

Atheism, a term which will, I'm sure, eventually become as unnecessary as round-earthism.

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness - by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.

Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.

Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.