Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life: his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. Not since David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up.

If we say that religion is a virus, then why isn't science a virus?

Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment."

So Occam's razor - Occam says you should choose the explanation that is most simple and straightforward - leads me more to believe in God than in the multiverse, which seems quite a stretch of the imagination.

If you are in the camp I am, one place where science and faith could touch each other is in the investigation of supposedly miraculous events.

The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion.

I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.