I had abandoned Catholicism, but even during my short militant atheist period I maintained an interest in western religious art and music.

Unlike art which contains a message, wine conveys nothing, it has no intellectual or cognitive content

Would it be better if religions were to disappear? I have no idea. Since I do not have any confidence in the association of truth with virtue, I am not sure if the world would be a better place if people believed more true things. But what is undeniable is that we cannot understand our own culture unless we recognise that it was formed, for good or bad, as a Christian culture. It's an illusion that we could somehow recover a human essence which is independent of the way it was created by culture.

I think we atheists should tolerate the religious not because their views are just as valid as ours, but because experience has shown that we are unlikely to convert them, and so we have to find some way to live in peace with them, even if we find their views false or otherwise objectionable.

I had abandoned Catholicism, but even during my short militant atheist period I maintained an interest in western religious art and music.

I like to think of myself as a naturalist - insofar as that term is at all clear.

I do think that philosophy and science are very different intellectual enterprises, but that does not mean that when we get knowledge from philosophy it is a different kind of knowledge.