Yesterday's dangerous idea is today's orthodoxy and tomorrow's cliché.

I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

To invoke the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing - for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.

The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion but usually does.

You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.