The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn't he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured?

Science tells us what we have reason to believe. Not what we have a duty to believe. Not what experts, in their pontificating wisdom, instruct us to believe... No, science tells us what there is good reason to believe.

This person should have been aborted years ago.

I think that [Paul] Bloom's approach - and others who take it - is not so much that there is a precise genetic basis to faith. But there is a genetic basis to a psychological predisposition that manifests itself as faith and religion under the right conditions.

Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Religious organisations have an automatic tax-free charitable status.

Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.