Religious people are atheists about all other gods, atheists only take it one god further.

If you are asking me if my more global purpose is a battle against religion, it is.

I have never quite understood - and this is no doubt my failing - I never quite understood why you would read fiction to understand the human condition.

The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence … The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held to us as worthy of imitation.

A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

You can never be absolutely certain that anything doesn't exist. But you can show that it's unlikely.