Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.

Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp.

Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.

I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction. I like science fiction where there's a scientific lesson, for example - when the science fiction book changes one thing but leaves the rest of science intact and explores the consequences of that. That's actually very valuable.

It would be really worrying if, as a Darwinian, it was impossible to think of ways in which our behavior could be explained.

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.

Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion but usually does.