People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals.

The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.

We want to be special. We want our place in the cosmos to be central. We want evolution-even godless evolution-to have been directed toward us so that we stand at the pinnacle of nature's ladder of progress. Rewind the tape of life and we want to believe that we (Homo Sapiens) would appear again and again. Would we? Probably not.

Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant.

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.

We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.