The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true memories.

To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God - it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

It's very important to try to inculcate into children moral rules, such as "do as you would be done by."

I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.

I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.