"No, I think that was completely an illusion. I think it was a very, very reasonable illusion to be under. There are illusions, there are substantive claims about the world that go beyond predictions that we can make and verify which later turned out to be wrong and the existence of God was one of them. If those people at that time had abandoned their belief in God and replaced it with a mechanistic universe, they would’ve done just as well at understanding things. Again, because there are so many things they didn’t understand, it was very reasonable for them to have that belief, it wasn’t that they were dummies or anything like that. But that is, as we understand the universe better and better, some things stick with us, some things get replaced."

"Yeah, get behind a computer. My way of doing it … So, my wife, Jennifer, is a science writer but it’s interesting because our techniques are entirely different. She will think about something but then she’ll free write, she’ll just sit at a computer and write I think this, I think this, I think this. And then that will be vastly compressed, edited, rewritten or whatever until the final thing happens. I will just sit there silently thinking for a very long time and then I’ll write what is almost the final draft. So, a lot of it happens. There might be some scribbles for an outline or something like that but a lot of it is in my brain before it’s on the page."

"I think we would figure out that language thing pretty quickly. I mean, maybe not as quickly as we do when different human tribes find each other, because obviously there’s a lot of commonalities in humanity. But there is logic in math, and there is the physical world. You can point to a rock and go “rock.” I don’t think it would take that long."