For the record: Quantum mechanics does not deny the existence of objective reality. Nor does it imply that mere thoughts can change external events. Effects still require causes, so if you want to change the universe, you need to act on it.
— Lawrence M. Krauss
Aside from communications satellites, space is devoid of industry.
When a person's religious beliefs cause him to deny the evidence of science, or for whom public policy morphs into a battle with the devil, shouldn't that be a subject for discussion and debate?
For many, to live in a universe that may have no purpose, and no creator, is unthinkable.
One might rationally argue that individual human beings should be free choose what moral behavior they approve of, and which they don't, subject to the constraints of the law.
I don't know if science and reason will ultimately help guide humanity to a better and more peaceful future, but I am certain that this belief is part of what keeps the 'Star Trek' fandom going.
Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
To me, what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.
Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and it's - it's fascinatingly interesting.
No one intuitively understands quantum mechanics because all of our experience involves a world of classical phenomena where, for example, a baseball thrown from pitcher to catcher seems to take just one path, the one described by Newton's laws of motion. Yet at a microscopic level, the universe behaves quite differently.
Empirical explorations ultimately change our understanding of which questions are important and fruitful and which are not.
The Bible is full of dubious scientific impossibilities, from Jonah living inside a whale, to the sun standing still in the sky for Joshua.
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
Whatever the evolutionary basis of religion, the xenophobia it now generates is clearly maladaptive.
To the extent that we even understand string theory, it may imply a massive number of possible different universes with different laws of physics in each universe, and there may be no way of distinguishing between them or saying why the laws of physics are the way they are. And if I can predict anything, then I haven't explained anything.
Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them that they should be interested in what you have to say.
We should provide the meaning of the universe in the meaning of our own lives. So I think science doesn't necessarily have to get in the way of kind of spiritual fulfillment.
I can't prove that God doesn't exist, but I'd much rather live in a universe without one.
If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet.
When it comes to the real operational issues that govern our understanding of physical reality, ontological definitions of classical philosophers are, in my opinion, sterile.
Imagining living in a universe without purpose may prepare us to better face reality head on. I cannot see that this is such a bad thing.
Organized religion, wielding power over the community, is antithetical to the process of what modern democracy should define as liberty. The sooner we are without it, the better.
A significant fraction of evangelical voters appear more likely to ignore the candidates' specific economic and foreign policy platforms in favor of concerns about gay marriage or abortion.
By no definition of any modern scientist is intelligent design science, and it's a waste of our students' time to subject them to it.
People are interested in science, but they don't always know they're interested in science, and so I try to find a way to get them interested.
Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them.
The universe has a much greater imagination than we do, which is why the real story of the universe is far more interesting than any of the fairy tales we have invented to describe it.
