All science is intelligent inference; excessive literalism is delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence.

The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion

With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.

Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

Any decent writer writes because there's some deep internal need to keep learning.

History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.