You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.

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.

There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years - some call it sociobiology or evolutionary psychology - relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes.

Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children

Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.