At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice.

If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.

I illustrate with a quotation from the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty, who died recently and is, I suspect, now having a lengthy conversation with his maker. Rorty argued that secular professors ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?

We are equal inhabitants of a paradise of individuals in which everybody has the right to be understood.