The Visions We Offer Our Children Shape

The Evidence, So Far At Least And Laws Of Nature Aside, Does Not Require A Designer. Maybe There Is One Hiding, Maddeningly Unwilling To Be Revealed.

I Believe That Part Of What Propels Science Is The Thirst For Wonder. It's A Very Powerful Emotion. All Children Feel It. In A First Grade Classroom Everybody Feels It; In A Twelfth Grade Classroom Almost Nobody Feels It, Or At Least Acknowledges It. Something Happens Between First And Twelfth Grade, And It's Not Just Puberty. Not Only Do The Schools And The Media Not Teach Much Skepticism, There Is Also Little Encouragement Of This Stirring Sense Of Wonder. Science And Pseudoscience Both Arouse That Feeling. Poor Popularizations Of Science Establish An Ecological Niche For Pseudoscience.

If We Are Merely Matter Intricately Assembled, Is This Really Demeaning? If There's Nothing Here But Atoms, Does That Make Us Less Or Does That Make Matter More?

Because Men, Compared To Male Chimps, Have Such Relatively Small Testicles (large Testicles Indicate A Species Where Many Males Mate, One After The Other, With The Same Female), We Might Guess That Promiscuous Societies Were Uncommon In The Immediate Human Past.

Our Species Needs, And Deserves, A Citizenry With Minds Wide Awake And A Basic Understanding Of How The World Works.