I became a little alarmed at the number of my readers who took the meme more positively as a theory of human culture in its own right - either to criticize it (unfairly, given my original modest intention) or to carry it far beyond the limits of what I then thought justified. This was why I may have seemed to backtrack.

There are very interesting controversies within evolution; however, whether evolution occurs is not one of them. It definitely does.

...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.

That was unfortunate. I should have compared religion with religion and compared Islam not with Trinity College but with Jews, because the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is phenomenally high.

Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

I'd like everybody to be secular. I suppose I have to say politically I would like religion to become gentler and nicer and to stop interfering with other people's lives, stop repressing women, stop indoctrinating children, all that sort of thing. But I really, really would like to see religion go away altogether.

Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant.