We are compelled to drive toward total knowledge, right down to the levels of the neuron and the gene. When we have progressed enough to explain ourselves in these mechanistic terms...the result might be hard to accept.

And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people's minds.

The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence.

Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius.

On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest, here no more than an irregular pile of dirt partly flattened by the last pass of a lawnmower. Winged queens and males are taking off on their nuptial flight, protected by angry-looking workers that run up and down the grass blades and out onto the blistering-hot concrete of the sidewalk. The species is unmistakably Solenopsis geminata, the native fire ant.