When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea.

Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned.

But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.

The Roman Catholic Church is an institution for whose gains the phrase "ill-gotten" might have been specially invented. And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history, the medieval equivalent of the Nigerian Internet scam but far more successful.

... you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, out number the sand grains in the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here. The number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist... we are privileged to be alive and nd we should make the most of our time on this world.

You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.