Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount of aid we are giving.

With the eventual acceptance of Darwin's theory we reach a modern understanding of nature, one which has since then changed in detail rather than in fundamentals. Only those who prefer religious faith to beliefs based on reasoning and evidence can still maintain that the human species is the special darling of the entire universe, or that other animals were created to provide us with food, or that we have divine authority over them, and divine permission to kill them.

It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.

We wait until Pandora's box is opened before we say, "Wow, maybe we should understand what's in that box." This is the story of humans on every problem.

Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.

There is an obvious evolutionary explanation for the scarcity of altruistic saints: Without a strong predilection for their own interests, our ancestors would have been unlikely to survive, reproduce, and give their own offspring a chance of doing the same. Now conditions have changed and for most of us, surviving and reproducing isn't such a struggle but we still carry the genes of our ancestors and they influence - not determine, but influence - our behavior.