"The seventy-six-year-old Burbank told them that he was no atheist. He subscribed to what he hoped would someday become a religion of humanity, worshiping a God "as revealed to us gradually, step by step, by the demonstrable truths of our savior, science," he said to his audience. Burbank didn't see the point of wasting time pondering hypothetical eternities in heaven or hell. Heredity--the continuity of life through the generations--was vast enough for him. "All things--plants, animals, and men--are already in eternity, traveling across the face of time," he said."