Writer

There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the people doing the science, and then there's somebody who checks the checkers and somebody who checks the checker's checkers.

One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements.

One of the features of a democracy is the disentanglement of the sacred from the secular because in religiously pluralistic countries, no one can legitimately claim special status by faith membership.

As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce.

Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life.

In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.

Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we have ever known.

Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.

We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.

I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.

The natural inclination in all humans is to posit a force, a spirit, outside of us. That tendency toward superstitious magical thinking is just built into our nature.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.

Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.

Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.

Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.

We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.

The actual atoms and molecules that make up my brain and body today are not the same ones that I was born with on September 8, 1954, a half-century ago this month.