1. Doubt is our true ally, it encourages us to think rationally and move forward.

2. Doubt is our true ally, it encourages us to think rationally and move forward. Belief on the other hand can be an enemy continually preying on our emotions.

3. Doubt is our true ally, it encourages us to think rationally and move forward. Belief on the other hand can be an enemy continually preying on our emotions. Belief tends to persuade us to discount evidence that is unsettling to our convictions and locks one forever in a false sense of security.

5. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away Philip K Dick

6. The Relativity of Wrong When people thought the Earth was flat they were wrong. When people thought it was round they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is round is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat then your view is more wrong than both of them put together Isaac Asimov - 1989

7. Real progress in the development of humanity – a truly human, and our greatest, creation - has only been possible because legions of brave men and women have, throughout history, fought to break the grip on society of those who claim power based on unproven and unprovable dogma.

8. Let us consider a the following events 200,000 people died in the South East Asia Tsunami 6-7 million people died in Germany at the hands of the Nazis Countless Indians died as the Europeans colonised in North and South America 100,000 died in Hiroshima and Nagaski 4000 died in the WTC on 11 th Sept 2001

9. Would one charcaterise any or all these events ere any of these as evil?

10. Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able to prevent it? Then God is not omnipotent Is God able to prevent evil but not willing to prevent it? Then God is malevolent Is God both able to prevent evil and willing to to prevent it? - Then whence comes evil? Epicurus

11. Probably nothing - about science - disturbs non-scientists more than the seemingly dogmatic rejection of claims of the paranormal. But science is not rejecting the claims so much as the evidence used to support them Alan Comer

12. Probably nothing - about science - disturbs non-scientists more than the seemingly dogmatic rejection of claims of the paranormal. But science is not rejecting the claims so much as the evidence used to support them Alan Comer

13. What a more critical mind might recognise as a hallucination or a dream, a more credulous mind interprets as a glimpse of an elusive but profound external reality Carl Sagan The Demon Haunted World

14. Man (and Woman) is a credulous animal and must believe something – in the absence of good grounds for belief, he (and she) will be satisfied with bad ones. Bertrand Russell

16. Hume’s Maxim No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle (or anything extraordinary), unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous (or extraordinary) than that which it endeavours to establish. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 1758

17. The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell

18. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka I found it!”, but “That’s funny…” Isaac Asimov

19. This seems simple to us today but was pretty daring at the time Lester Little American Academy Rome

20. By Science I mean knowledge pure and simple with no limits and thus I mean an understanding of everything

21. In this sense Science is truly independent of race, colour or creed and thus the only international, humanitarian and democratic philosophy

22. Scientific advances are only fully accepted when the recipe is published so that the experiments can be repeated and the results unequivocally confirmed.

24. A lie will travel half way round the world while the truth is putting its shoes on. Mark Twain

25. The most common of follies is the belief passionately in the palpably untrue H L Mencken

26. Even if a billion people believe a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing Anatole France (x20)

27. The Royal Society chose: “Nullius in verba” “We take nobody’s word for it“

28. Intellectual Integrity Intellectual integrity - the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive Bertrand Russell 1957