Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.

We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticise it.

Evolution is a very, very important idea. It is the explanation for all of life - a stunningly simple, yet powerful explanation. If you think about it, before Darwin, we hadn't the foggiest idea of how we came into being. Now we do. It's still such an exciting idea that it is well worth everybody understanding it.

Religion: Together we can find the cure.

Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin.

It is immoral to brand children with religion. 'This is a Catholic child.' 'That is a Muslim child.' I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, 'That is a Marxist child.'

Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade.