That I can answer very quickly: it's someone named Johnny Carson. I never said it. I never ever said it. I mean it's sort of like Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again, Sam”. Nobody believes it, but it's true. 

Yes, that's an important question. Isn't this another of the conceits that only humans are conscious? Ann Druyan and I wrote a book called “Shadows of forgotten ancestors”, in which we tried systematically to look at each of these, what I've called conceits, and I think the most startling thing we've learned – or speak to myself, that I learned – in the course of doing that book, was how we kept getting it wrong on these issues.  Now, consciousness has various meanings. If it means an awareness of the external world and modifying your behaviour to take account of the external world, then, I think, microbes are conscious. If you mean deep thoughts like Bishop Berkeley’s contention, that nothing exists except what's in his mind, I'm with the microbes myself.

You see, how do you know that I think any thoughts? Only because I happen to be communicating to you? You can't easily tell, that I have philosophical thoughts, by looking at me drinking this cup of water, right? So imagine that I was mute, that I could not communicate by speech or writing or anything else. Then, how would you know, if I had such thoughts? 

The evidence for, not just the so-called higher apes, but running through the apes and the monkeys, to me is very persuasive, that they have thoughts. Not only deep philosophical thoughts, but useful practical thoughts. Like lying. Like deceit. Like planning to fool others – thinking about it far in advance. 

But let me just give one little image, which I like, because it covers many different grounds. These are the results of work at the Arnhem Colony in the Netherlands, where there is a large, free roaming community of chimps. The males are testosterone-driven and subject to raging hormonal imbalances. They get angry at each other and pick up rocks. They go quite a distance to get the rocks, in order to confront the guy who they don’t like and throw stones. 

The very act of going over there, out of sight of the enemy, to pick up the stones and then bring them back to throw the stone, shows thinking ahead, understanding a goal and aware of yourself and the opposition. But the most interesting thing is: It is common for female chimps, seeing the males burdened with their stones, to walk up to them and disarm them. Plug the stones out of their arms, open up their fingers and throw the stones away. And when the males, in a huff, gather them up, the females disarm them again. 

So, not only do the males know what they have in mind, the females know what they have in mind. And that to me not only is consciousness, but a social arrangement, I'd like to see more of in humans.

No.

You see, the idea that our sense of self-worth comes not from anything that we've done, not from anything worth, but by an accident of birth, is where the crux of the humiliation is, in my opinion. I would say, those of us, worried about being demoted, those of us, who wish for us to be important, should do something important. 

We should make an easily understandable, achievable and inspiring goal for the human species and then set out and do it. That would give us the confidence,   that we sorely lack,  by being dependent on our self-esteem being based on nothing we do. 

We want to have self-esteem? Let's make a planet, in which nobody is starving! Let's make a planet, in which men and women have equal access to power! Let’s make a planet, in which no ethnic group has it over another ethnic group! Let's have a planet, in which science and engineering is used for the benefit of everybody on the planet! And, my personal idiosyncrasy, let's have a world, in which we go to other worlds! 

On our own!

Which to my mind is much more responsible, than hoping, that someone will save us from ourselves, so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it ourselves. And if we're wrong and there is someone who steps in and saves us, okay, that's alright. I'm for that. But we, you know, hedged our bets. Its Pascal's bargain run backwards. 

I say another word. The word God covers an enormous range of different ideas – and you recognised that in the question. Running from an outsized light-skinned male with a long white beard sitting in a throne in the sky and tallying the fall of every sparrow – for which there is no evidence to my mind. If anybody has some, I sure would like to see it – to the kind of God that Einstein or Spinoza talked about: which is very close to the sum total of the laws of the universe. 

Now, I'd be crazy to deny that there are laws in the universe and if that's what you want to call God, then, of course, God exists. There are all sorts of other nuances. There is, for example, the deist God, hat many of the founding fathers of this country believed in, although it is a secret, whose name may not be spoken in some circles: a roi fainéant, a do-nothing king. The God who creates the universe and then retires. And to whom praying to, is sort of pointless. 

“He's not here. He went somewhere else . He had other things to do.”

That's also a God. So, when you say: Do you believe in God? If I say yes, or if I say no, you have learned absolutely nothing. 

I guess, I'm asking you, to define yours,  if you have one. 

But why would we use a word so ambiguous, that means so many different things?

It gives you freedom to define it.

It gives you freedom, to seem to agree with someone else, with whom you do not agree. It covers over differences. It makes for social lubrication. But, it is not an aide to truth, in my view, and therefore, I think, we need much sharper language when we ask these questions. 

The plains of Nazca. 

Well, where did all this stuff about the plains of Nazca being somehow mysterious and extraterrestrial come from? It came from a guy named Erich von Däniken, a Swiss hotelier, who wrote a book called “Chariots of the Gods”, which became a worldwide best-seller, in which he argued as follows: 

On the plains of Nazca in Peru there are large drawings. Some of them look like spiders, some look like turkeys, some are straight lines. Von Däniken concluded that the straight lines were airfields and the other stuff was messages, that doltish humans were instructed, in carving in the desert of Peru by extraterrestrial overseers. 

Why? What's this about? We don't know how to draw big pictures without extraterrestrials telling us what to do? Some of those straight lines are six inches across. How big are the airplanes that land on those airfields? 

What are we do imagine? An interstellar spacecraft effortlessly crosses hundreds thousands of light-years, the cargo door opens, and out come little propeller-driven airplanes about the size of toys, like my three and a half year old son plays with? And they land in Peru and tell people:

"Hey, we got toy airplanes, please make airports for us. And by the way make a big turkey!"

This is silly. 

The common feature in all of Von Däniken's fantasising is, that he sells our ancestors short. He goes to Egypt, he sees pyramids. 

“Boy, those are big. How big are they?”

“Constituent blocks of 100 tons.”

“100 tons”, says Von Däniken, “I couldn't lift a block that weighed half that. Therefore, human beings are unable to lift blocks of that mass. Therefore, extraterrestrials did it. Q.e.d.” 

But if he had read Herodotus – nevermind archaeology – his Hirata is written, you know, it's in English translated, it’s in German translated, we have an idea about quarries and logs as rollers, and rafts up the Nile, and how humans could do it. We’re perfectly capable of building

things big. Even those of us who lived a long time ago. Even those of us with dark-skin. People know how to build big.

And the idea that extraterrestrial visitation is required, every time, a naive observer can't figure out how something could be done, is silly! 

The one possible positive aspect of Von Däniken is, that it might in frustration, drive an occasional reader into archaeology.

If it exists, it would have arised by evolution, by natural selection, the same way as everything else. But, what do we mean by extrasensory perception? There is an African freshwater fish, that establishes static electric fields and then detects its prey by perturbations in the electric field. We can't do that at all. It doesn't correspond to any of our senses. 

Does this fish have ESP? If it does have ESP, is this mysterious? Is it a challenge to science? Or is it just another way of perceiving the world? 

So, therefore, if there is ESP, I think the chances are excellent that that it can be well understood by science. But to the best of my knowledge there isn't any ESP.

I have struggled greatly with this issue. In part, because I have a graduate student, Peter Wilson, who holds my feet to the fire on this issue. For example, I have a 20 year old leather jacket, that I used to wear to Cornell, that I don't wear anymore. I do wear it around the house, if truth be told. 

I am very conflicted on this issue, that gratuitous pain should not be inflicted on other animals, or for that matter, plants, I think is clear. And that animals should not be made to suffer for fairly trivial goals,  the making of lipstick, for example, I think is clear. To argue though, that animals should not be used in the pursuit of medicines and medical procedures, that might save the lives of humans, it is not so clear to me. And Charles Darwin had just the same distinction. He was way ahead of his time and in opposing gratuitous pain. But it would also not argue that no animal experiments should be done. 

And I think, if I had to explain to some people, whose child was dying because a medical procedure was unavailable, which might very well have been available, with animal experimentation have been performed, I don't know how I do that justification. 

Now, you might say to me, that I'm putting humans higher than other animals. And where do I come off, doing that, especially at the end of an evening where I've been decrying chauvinisms? This, to me, is like the argument that is sometimes said:

"Why should we take any steps to save ourselves, if an asteroid is gonna hit the earth – since asteroids have hit the earth in the past? And, you know, others have gone, so we might be here. So we'll go, so, you know, the raccoons will have their chance or the answer. Or the sulfur oxidation state altering submarine worms will inherit the earth."

At this point, I have no difficulty – since I happened to be a human being – to justify human beings trying to survive under sometimes trying circumstances. That's my judgment. I’m sure, if I were a lizard up here, I would be talking about: 

“Yes, let’s sacrifice the humans, so we can get better medicine for the lizards. After all, I'm a lizard.” 

I'm sorry, I can’t help it, I'm a human. I'm not saying this, as if I know what your point of view is, but what I'm just trying to clarify, how I think about it.