[Alternative medicine is defined as] that set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested or consistently fail tests.

But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.

To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us, because we are so well-suited to live in it, he [Douglas Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle.

The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn't vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction).

We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticise it.

If we say that religion is a virus, then why isn't science a virus?