If We Are To Survive,

I Think If We Ever Reach The Point Where We Think We Thoroughly Understand Who We Are And Where We Came From, We Will Have Failed.

Those Afraid Of The Universe As It Really Is, Those Who Pretend To Nonexistent Knowledge And Envision A Cosmos Centered On Human Beings Will Prefer The Fleeting Comforts Of Superstition.

Philosophers And Scientists Confidently Offer Up Traits Said To Be Uniquely Human, And The Monkeys And Apes Casually Knock Them Down -- Toppling The Pretension That Humans Constitute Some Sort Of Biological Aristocracy Among The Beings On Earth.

The Well-meaning Contention That All Ideas Have Equal Merit Seems To Me Little Different From The Disastrous Contention That No Ideas Have Any Merit.

In The Middle 1970s An Astronomer I Admire Put Together A Modest Manifesto Called "objections To Astrology" And Asked Me To Endorse It. I Struggled With His Wording, And In The End Found Myself Unable To Sign, Not Because I Thought Astrology Has Any Validity Whatever, But Because I Felt (and Still Feel) That The Tone Of The Statement Was Authoritarian.