When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes, atheism IS a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man's own redemptive nature.

Naturally, there's got to be a limit for I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know - even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction - than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

... you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.