Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.

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.

Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.

A retaliator behaves like a hawk when he is attacked by a hawk, and like a dove when he meets a dove. When he meets another retaliator he plays like a dove. A retaliator is a conditional strategist. His behaviour depends on the behaviour of his opponent.

It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.

Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?