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The desire for knowledge is what differentiates humans from beasts. Without that desire, intelligence could never have developed, and cannot be maintained. When we see in animals some small spark of curiosity, we see it as a sign of incipient intelligence. When we see in other humans a total lack of interest in the world around them, we interpret this as a sign of psychological problems.

A wise person is always questioning and seeking, and a truly wise person knows that to every question about the the universe there is never a complete answer. Doubt is the only path to wisdom, but it is a never-ending path, and there will always be another question to answer. Fools believe in the extent of their knowledge, the wise believe only in the extent of their ignorance.

To believe that all knowledge can be found in one old book written in humanity’s infancy, is to believe in unintelligence and the dominance of the bestial mind. To reject education and science is to reject humanity.

Those religious and superstitious people who claim the spiritual high ground would have us stare at the universe with a sense of wonder and awe, but without the desire to ask questions beyond what we are told in their revelatory scriptures. This seems to be the very opposite of spirituality : a real scientist is a truly spiritual person, since the true spirit of humanity is to question and explore, and not to believe blindly. If by God we mean the creative spirit of the universe, then there can be nothing more spiritual than a desire to discover its true nature, and nothing less spiritual than to believe that one’s tiny human mind can ever understand it. The so-called holy books of the world are at best histories of humanity’s failures, and at worst blindfolds that obscure the true beauty of creation.