Textbooks describe DNA as a blueprint for a body. It's better seen as a recipe for making a body, because it is irreversible. But today I want to present it as something different again, and even more intriguing. The DNA in you is a coded description of ancient worlds in which your ancestors lived. DNA is the wisdom out of the old days, and I mean very old days indeed.

Having a debate with a modern Christian is like punching a sponge.

Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

I can remember at the age of about six being fascinated by the planets and learning all about Mars and Venus and things.

If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining.

Organizing atheists is a bit like herding cats; They are on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being herded.

The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them - teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh - the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.