We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. - Edward O. Wilson

Original discoveries, to remind you, are what count the most. Let me put that more strongly: they are all that counts. They are the silver and gold of science.

All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs. An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry. Then, also with frightening ease, good people do bad things. I know this truth from experience, having grown up in the Deep South during the 1930s

The great religions are also, and tragically, sources of ceaseless and unnecessary suffering. They are impediments to the grasp of reality needed to solve most social problems in the real world.