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.

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

We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

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

For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology.