If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope to eventually understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.

Suppose that there's a gene that makes you gay if you were bottle-fed but that has some completely different effect if you were breast-fed. So in the days before bottles were invented that gene would not have manifested itself as gay behavior, but now that bottles are common it can do so.

There is something wrong with using faith - belief without evidence - as a political weapon. I wouldn't say there is something similar about using science. Science - or the products of science like technology - is just a way of achieving something real, something that happens, something that works.

You can never be absolutely certain that anything doesn't exist. But you can show that it's unlikely.

Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.