Empirical explorations ultimately change our understanding of which questions are important and fruitful and which are not.

Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas.

Celebrate our brief moment in the sun

We now know that we are more insignificant than we ever imagined. If you get rid of everything we see, the universe is essentially the same. We constitute a 1 percent bit of pollution in a universe . . . we are completely irrelevant.

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.

Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous.

What people believe impacts on what they do. And it's not as if religion is universally bad. Of course it's responsible for many peoples doing good actions.