Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

Suppose that there's a gene that makes you gay if you were bottle-fed but that has some completely different effect if you were breast-fed. So in the days before bottles were invented that gene would not have manifested itself as gay behavior, but now that bottles are common it can do so.

The body is a survival machine programmed to propagate the genes that reside inside it.

Religious people are atheists about all other gods, atheists only take it one god further.

We have this one life, let's enjoy it, let's live it to the full and don't get so worked up about don't identify yourself so passionately with this business called religion.

If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.