What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one's life.

People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to pull all this together ... and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get annoyed.

Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won't need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet.

Technological civilizations don't last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.

The real problem has to do with the inability by people to admit that a position they've held a long time might be wrong. That's all. Not that it is. Just that it might be. I don't know why it is, but we tend to fall in love with things we believe, Threaten them, and you threaten us.

Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.

Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don't like it very much.