I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.
Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle.
It is immoral to brand children with religion. ‘This is a Catholic child.’ ‘That is a Muslim child.’ I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, ‘That is a Marxist child.’
If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.
All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.
You can’t understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can’t recognise biblical allusions.
People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It’s as though you’ve said they had an ugly face; they seem to identify personally with it.
The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don’t.
Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.
I would like to find a way in which people in Saudi Arabia could learn that they can be something other than a Muslim. Some people may not realize this. Of course, there is the problem that you can get in trouble or get stoned.
I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to a natural history sort of knowledge.
The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.
I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.
Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.
Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.
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.
If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it.
Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.
The odd thing about tradition is, the longer it’s been going, the more people seem to take it seriously – as though sheer passage of time makes something which to begin with was just made up, turns it into what people believe as a fact.
I like to think ‘The God Delusion’ is a humorous book. I think, actually, it’s full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it’s just that very often they haven’t read it.