There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.

I think many people are terribly afraid of being demoted by the Darwinian scheme from the role of authors and creators in their own right into being just places where things happen in the universe.

To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.

Go ahead and believe in God , if you like, but don't imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.

Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.

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.