The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.
I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.
Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.
Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.
But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.
If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it.
Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.
The odd thing about tradition is, the longer it’s been going, the more people seem to take it seriously – as though sheer passage of time makes something which to begin with was just made up, turns it into what people believe as a fact.
If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.
I like to think ‘The God Delusion’ is a humorous book. I think, actually, it’s full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it’s just that very often they haven’t read it.
Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.
I shall not make an argument ad hominem. My argument is ad bullshitem.
We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.
I don’t think God is an explanation at all. It’s simply redescribing the problem.
Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain’s greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.
The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially, the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer.
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.
Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.
I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.
Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant.