Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivasection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! The only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.

I think Douglas [Adams] is writing with an eye to irony for adults at the same time as entertaining children.

Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.

...I am not attacking any particular God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, whenever or wherever they have been or will be invented.

From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in.