On religion

"I had a second breakthrough listening to Richard Dawkins explain his theory that religious faith is a misfiring of the gratitude impulse. As he explains it, as herd animals, human beings are hard-wired to feel gratitude and repay debts: reciprocity holds the herd together. But good things also happen for reasons outside human agency. After a week of rain, your wedding day dawns fine, warm and sunny. You feel immense relief and gratitude, but whom should you thank? Who can you repay? A god, of course, that's who. After my own experience, I understand the need to give thanks to something. So as an explanation of why humans invented gods, it makes perfect sense to me. I think that's the essence of my lack of belief, in fact: that it just makes sense."

"Atheism is more attached to questions while religion is more attached to answers. The religious fear doubt, the atheist celebrates it. When it comes to the really big questions – like the nature and meaning of the universe – my lack of knowing does not bother me at all. I admire cosmologists and astronomers whose curiosity about the space that surrounds us drives them to explore, ask questions and posit hypotheses. When they discover something, I read with interest the stories about it in the media. But just as it took us millennia to discover every corner of our planet, I suspect, as far as knowing the universe is concerned, we're a little like a few tribal Neanderthals a couple of hundred thousand years ago setting off into an unknown ocean in a rickety canoe."

"American physicist Lawrence Krauss told the audience at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne that scientists now understand the universe is about 70 per cent empty space and 30 per cent dark matter, and that everything else we can see – stars, galaxies and so on – makes up less than 1 per cent. "Cosmology has taught us you are far, far more insignificant than you thought," he said. I don't need the universe to have meaning or purpose. I'm happy for it just to be. If a meteor is hurtling towards earth as I write, no doubt I will be momentarily dismayed when I realise the world and everything on it is about to be destroyed, but does that mean it matters? In the greater scheme of things, I doubt it."

"That's the thing about us atheists: far from the arrogance we are usually accused of, ours is a fundamentally humble position – we do not believe humanity is in any way special. For the atheist, there is no vertical structure to the universe, with a god at the top, men next, followed by women, then all the animals, reptiles, fish and insects, with amoebae and bacteria at the bottom. For atheists, particularly when confronted with the vastness of the universe, amoebae are us."

By Jane Caro in "Losing my religion" - The Age - June 30, 2013