Consciousness," according to current scientific thought, was something the higher mammals had evolved in order to help them reproduce, much the way a garden slug secretes slime. It had no special ontological status. The "self" was a genetically modulated and biologically useful illusion.

The Mysteries are the Mysteries, and ultimately personal maybe the most personal thing in the universe. Evangelism, in my opinion, is a failure of the imagination. Beware of prophets: the best visions are the ones they leave in the desert.

We're as ephemeral as raindrops. We all fall, and we all land somewhere.

Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don't need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion.

To capture the pawn, threaten the queen.

Personally, I don't believe in anything more supernatural than what you read about in the Bible, and I only believe that one day out of seven.

We live in an enlightened age, however, an age that has learned to see and to value other living things as they are, not as we wish them to be. And the long and creditable history of science has taught us, if nothing else, to look carefully before we judge to judge, if we must, based on what we see, not what we would prefer to believe.