We want to be open-minded enough to accept radial new ideas when they occasionally come along, but we don't want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out.

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said "praise the Lord" and sat back down.

Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience.

We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.