A Scholar Is Just A Library's Way

There Are No Forces On This Planet More Dangerous To All Of Us Than The Fanaticisms Of Fundamentalism.

The Earth Has Grown A Nervous System, And It's Us.

I Don't Think The 9/11 Attacks Taught Us Anything We Didn't Already Know About Religion. It Has Long Been Obvious - Even To The Deeply Religious - That Religious Fanaticism Is An Extremely Dangerous Deranger Of Otherwise Sane And Goodhearted People.

After Darwin, God's Role Changes From Being The Designer Of All Creatures Great And Small To Being The Designer Of The Laws Of Nature, From Which Natural Selection Can Unfold, To Being Perhaps Just The Chooser Of The Laws. By The Time God's Role Has Been So Diminished, He Becomes A Bit Like A Constitutional Monarch, Presiding Ceremonially But Not Having Any More Work To Do. That's A Place For God If It Makes People Comfortable To Keep God As The Presider Over The Universe. I Suppose That Is Satisfying For Many.

The Task Of The Mind Is To Produce Future, As The Poet Paul Valery Once Put It. A Mind Is Fundamentally An Anticipator, An Expectation-generator. It Mines The Present For Clues, Which It Refines With The Help Of The Materials It Has Saved From The Past, Turning Them Into Anticipations Of The Future. And Then It Acts, Rationally, On The Basis Of Those Hard-won Anticipations.