...the religions have tied together together two things: They, for instance, if they want to teach the Ten Commandments, they're not satisfied to teach the Ten Commandments because it's the experience of mankind or something that these are a good way to proceed. But they teach the Ten Commandments because these things were given to Moses through lightning. Now, when the science comes along, it suggests that it's possible that maybe these things weren't given to Moses through lightning. A person who doesn't think too far says, "Oh, then the whole thing is nuts. And I'm afraid to think that possibility, because maybe then the Ten Commandments have no basis at all." But that's not necessarily so. It's perfectly possible that the moralities could have come from men. It could have been that Moses was an ordinary man and that he wrote these things. And I still could believe and still behave the same way. And what I think has happened is that the religions have put together two different kinds of ideas and welded them so thoroughly - namely the theory of how the Ten Commandments arose, and the belief that you ought to follow them - that when science comes along and challenges one end of this - namely, how the Ten Commandments arose - people get nervous that they're challenging the other end of it; namely, that they have. But it's the religion who's tied them together unnecessarily; there's no real connection. And that's the way I feel; that's a personal, philosophical view of the relation of religion and science.

I can't be practising in the conventionally religious sense. It doesn't fit together. It seems to me that the ideas of conventional religion - like in the Bible and so forth - are very limited. They didn't realise the tremendous extent of the world, or the length of time in which things have been going on. It seems to me impossible, in a certain sense, that so much attention could be paid to man as is advertised in the usual religion, and so little attention paid to the rest of the world. It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different plants, and all these atoms with all their motions and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama. So I believe it's not the right picture.