I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out.

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.

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.

I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose

I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach.