The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.

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.

...but I also can't prove that mushrooms could not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us.

Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.

If the concept of consciousness were to fall to science, what would happen to our sense of moral agency and free will? If conscious experience were reduced somehow to mere matter in motion, what would happen to our appreciation of love and pain and dreams and joy? If conscious human beings were just animated material objects, how could anything we do to them be right or wrong?