Robert Sapolsky on science

Stated most straightforwardly, most of earth’s humans have inherited their beliefs about the nature of birth and death and everything in between and thereafter from preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists.

Like so many other animals, we have an often-frantic need to conform, belong, and obey. Such conformity can be markedly maladaptive, as we forgo better solutions in the name of the foolishness of the crowd.

The far-from-original point I will try to make now should seem obvious: There is an unsettling similarity between the rituals of the obsessive-compulsive and the rituals of the observantly religious.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Albert Einstein1879–1955Science and Religion (1941)

• Religion

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

Richard Feynman1918–1988

• Sex

The more I study science, the more I believe in God.

Albert Einstein1879–1955

• God