The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. Read Summary
The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle. Read Summary
There are quite a lot of YouTube clips of me that have gone viral. One that I think of is of a young woman at a lecture I was giving - she came from Liberty University, which is a ludicrous religious institution. She said, 'What if you are wrong?' and I answered that rather briefly, and that's gone viral. Read Summary
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. Read Summary
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. Read Summary
We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read Summary
We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Read Summary
Of course, we would love to know more about the exact moment of Big Bang, but interposing an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still know nothing about the creation of that intelligence. Read Summary
If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it. Read Summary
Anybody who has something sensible or worthwhile to say should be able to say it calmly and soberly, relying on the words themselves to convey his meaning, without resorting to yelling. Read Summary
Every night of our lives, we dream, and our brain concocts visions which are, at least until we wake up, highly convincing. Most of us have had experiences which are verging on hallucination. It shows the power of the brain to knock up illusions. Read Summary
We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun. Read Summary
My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence, but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. Read Summary
Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that. Read Summary
We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space. Read Summary
Segregation has no place in the education system. Read Summary
Words are not trivial. They matter because they raise consciousness. Read Summary
Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection. Read Summary
A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified. Read Summary
I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims. Read Summary