A Man Can See By Starlight, If

A Wonderful Area For Speculative Academic Work Is The Unknowable. These Days Religious Subjects Are In Disfavor, But There Are Still Plenty Of Good Topics. The Nature Of Consciousness, The Workings Of The Brain, The Origin Of Aggression, The Origin Of Language, The Origin Of Life On Earth, Seti And Life On Other Worlds...this Is All Great Stuff. Wonderful Stuff. You Can Argue It Interminably. But It Can't Be Contradicted, Because Nobody Knows The Answer To Any Of These Topics.

The Past History Of Human Belief Is A Cautionary Tale. We Have Killed Thousands Of Our Fellow Human Beings Because We Believed They Had Signed A Contract With The Devil, And Had Become Witches. We Still Kill More Than A Thousand People Each Year For Witchcraft. In My View, There Is Only One Hope For Humankind To Emerge From What Carl Sagan Called "the Demon-haunted World" Of Our Past. That Hope Is Science.

I Was Raised With The Idea That If You're Not Smart Enough To Do Science You Can Do Politics.

Do You Know What We Call Opinion In The Absence Of Evidence? We Call It Prejudice.

Even If You Don't Believe In God, You Still Have To Believe In Something That Gives Meaning To Your Life, And Shapes Your Sense Of The World. Such A Belief Is Religious.