Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life.

The brain can be seen as a complex machine, like a gooey computer.

Trust is a skill, one that is an aspect of virtually all human practices, cultures, and relationships.

Familiarity can no longer be a necessary condition for trust.

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion—romantic passion, religious passion, passion for work and for play, passionate commitments in the face of what reason knows to be meaningless.

The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.