Virtual reality is just air guitar writ large.

A science fiction writer should try to combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic.

Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.

No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?

With billions of years, who knows what science might make possible? Why, it might even make it possible for an intelligence, or data patterns representing it, to survive a big crunch and exist again in the next cycle of creation. Such an entity might even have science sufficient to allow it to influence the parameters for the next cycle, creating a designer universe into which that entity itself will be reborn already armed with billions of years worth of knowledge and wisdom.

How do you define God? Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension.

Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs--but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.