A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.

In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong.

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.

We're all talking about the same thing, whether it's religious people or New Age spiritual people or Buddhists or scientists. We're all talking about having a sense of awe and wonder at something grander than ourselves.

In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.

The evening was very professionally organized, and most of the people were exceptionally polite, although it did make me a little nervous when one church official told me after the debate when a big crowd of people surrounded me that he had assigned me a body guard "just in case." Just in case what? I thought Christians were suppose to be exceptionally tolerant. Well, in any case, I guess I was grateful for the gesture, "just in case."

But the power of science lies in open publication, which, with the rise of the Internet, is no longer constrained by the price of paper.