If you listen to two people who are arguing about something, and they each of them have passionate faith that they're right, but they believe different things---they belong to different religions, different faiths, there is nothing they can do to settle their disagreement short of shooting each other, which is what they very often actually do.

Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it.

Public sharing is an important part of science.

Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It’s a sort of crime against childhood.

Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.

[Jay] Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I do believe in God's creative power in having brought it all into being in the first place, I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation.