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.

I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed.

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.

A retaliator behaves like a hawk when he is attacked by a hawk, and like a dove when he meets a dove. When he meets another retaliator he plays like a dove. A retaliator is a conditional strategist. His behaviour depends on the behaviour of his opponent.

Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for "natural" methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

When I sign books, I get lines of people and what they usually say is: "Thank you. You have changed my life." I am really moved by that.

Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false.