Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.

How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. . . . Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. (158-159)

My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait; that is, a human universal.

If spirituality is the sense of awe and humility in the face of the creation, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists.

When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.

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

Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.