We're quite happy with our Big Bang description of cosmic origins. But actually, the Big Bang accounts for what happened only after the beginning. The beginning itself, and especially what happened before, remains the biggest mystery of all.

I don't have an issue with what you do in the church but I'm going to be up in your face if you're going to knock on my science classroom and tell me I got to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday school. That's when we're going to fight... There's no tradition of scientists knocking down the Sunday school door, telling the preacher 'that might not necessarily be true.' That's never happened. There are no scientists picketing out front of churches. There's been this coexistence forever, so to have religious communities knocking down the science door, there's something wrong there.

Nothing is a thing: it's nothing. So I can imagine a place where there's not even nothing.

The people that first climbed Mt. Everest weren't scientists, right, they were adventurers. If you're an adventurer, you want to go yourself. It's different than a scientist, who is simply wanting to learn.

If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you.

We already know the limits of Einstein's theories. From the centers of black holes at the very beginning of the universe - we call these singularities - Einstein's equations fail. In fact, people have joked that's where God is dividing by zero.

The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.