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

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.

As Enlightenment philosophers and scholars consciously adopted the methods of science to establish such abstract concepts as rights, liberty, and justice, successive generations have become schooled in thinking of these abstractions as applied to others in matrices-like mental rotations.

Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.

But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the divestment of bunk; its utility is in offering a better alternative, along with a lesson on how thinking goes wrong.

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