It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.

Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.

IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.

We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.

Hitler suffered acutely from meteorism; perhaps he did not suffer so acutely as those around him, since meteorism is uncontrolled farting, a condition exacerbated by Hitler's strictly vegetarian diet.

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.

It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.