Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.

The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.

I love romantic poetry.

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.