Neil Tyson: "At nearly every public lecture that I give on the universe, I try to reserve adequate time at the end for questions. The succession of subjects is predictable. First, the questions relate directly to the lecture. They next migrate to sexy astrophysical subjects such as black holes, quasars, and the Big Bang. If I have enough time left over to answer all questions, and if the talk is in America, the subject eventually reaches God. Typical questions include "Do scientists believe in God?" "Do you believe in God?" and "Do your studies in astrophysics make you more or less religious?"

Publishers have come to learn that there is a lot of money in God, especially when the author is a scientist and when the book title includes a direct juxtaposition of scientific and religious themes...Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion...The argument is simple. I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religious document. Indeed, I can make an even stronger statement. Whenever people have used religious documents to make detailed predictions about the physical world they have been famously wrong.

There's no denying the public's appetite for cosmic discovery. - Neil Tyson