491) I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so.

Isaac Asimov
I. Asimov (1994)

492) When the average man saw lightning rods rising over the steeples of the great cathedrals of Europe, he could see with his own eyes that the priests themselves trusted in science rather than in their own holiness [to protect them against the universe], and the battle [between science and religion] was over right there. In the last two centuries, religion has retreated steadily before science.

Isaac Asimov
"Essay 400 - A Way of Thinking" in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (12/94)

493) Any attempt to introduce sex education classes into the school curriculum is always met with fierce opposition. The feeling among those who oppose it [...] is that learning about sex will encourage youngsters to experiment with it and lead to unwanted pregnancies and disease. To me, this seem ridiculous. Nothing on earth can stop youngsters from experimenting with sex, unless they are kept so brutally in ignorance and captivity that their lives are distorted and ruined. By stripping away the mysteries of sex and treating it openly, the act is robbed of its illegality, of its attraction as "forbidden fruit." In my opinion, good knowledge of all aspects of sex, including proper methods of contraception and hygiene, will actually reduce unwanted pregnancies and disease.

Isaac Asimov
I. Asimov (1994)

494) [I]f I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern on their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

Isaac Asimov
I. Asimov (1994)

495) It seems to me that people who believe in immortality through transmigration of souls have a tendency to believe that they were all Julius Caesar or Cleopatra in the past and that they will be equally prominent in the future. Surely, that can't be so, Since some 90 percent of the human race lives (and has always, in time past, lived) in various degrees of poverty and misery, the chances are weighted against any transmigrating personalities ending up in happiness.

Isaac Asimov
I. Asimov (1994)

496) I'm sure that science can't ever explain everything and I can give you my reasons for that decision [...] I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties; that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left over, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.

Isaac Asimov
remarks made c. 1988
quoted in I. Asimov (1994)

497) There is a difference between fiction and ignorance.

Isaac Asimov
"Essay 400 - A Way of Thinking" in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (12/94)

498) Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.

Isaac Asimov
"Essay 400 - A Way of Thinking" in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (12/94)

499) My thesis [...] is not doubt-for-doubt's-sake, but doubt as a necessary barrier which the valid can overcome and the non-valid cannot. The more a finding seems to destroy the basis of scientific structure, the higher the barrier of doubt. Of course one must remember that "doubt" is not synonymous with "refusal to listen."

Isaac Asimov
"Essay 400 - A Way of Thinking" in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (12/94)

500) In this present world, scientific illiteracy is a sin and anyone who encourages the spread of scientific illiteracy is a criminal.

Isaac Asimov
"Essay 400 - A Way of Thinking" in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (12/94)