The theory that the biosphere was created without evolution, a few thousand years ago, is ruled out by overwhelming scientific evidence. To claim that there are 'alternative (always better) Biblical explanations of the same data', which make creationism a reasonable alternative to our best theories of biology and physics, is appalling intellectual dishonesty.

Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.

No precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. We need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance.

Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilisation or in a single individual, these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally. For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal.

I don't think it would be a good idea for scientists to have more political power. Scientists as a group are more inclined to try to derive an ought from an is, than the population at large.

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.

Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.