One of the possible reasons why we might be good is that we're frightened, frightened of God. We want the reward in Heaven, we don't want to go to Hell. That would be an ignoble, ignominious reason for being good, and I think that if anybody was good to you just because they hoped for a heavenly reward, you wouldn't respect them, you'd probably give them a wide berth.

Writing a computer virus program is child's play. Any fool can do it, which is why the silly little twerps who do have nothing to be proud of.

I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.

The beauty of evolution is that it does provide an explanation of how you can get complexity out of simplicity. It does it by slow, gradual degree. At no point are you postulating the sudden coming into existence of a complicated being.

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

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.

My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. ... I care about what's true.