Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

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.

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

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

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

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.

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

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

Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

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

Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?

'What is the purpose of the universe?' is a silly question.

A constellation is not an entity at all, not the kind of thing that Uranus, or anything else, can sensibly be said to 'move into.'

A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.

A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified.

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little.

A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on the heat of a jet plane's exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston.

A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian.

A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual hijacking of the word 'gay.'

A universe with a creator would be a totally different kind of universe, scientifically speaking, than one without.

All the fossils that we have ever found have always been found in the appropriate place in the time sequence. There are no fossils in the wrong place.

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

Although many of us fear death, I think there is something illogical about it.

An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version.

Any teaching of falsehoods in science classes should certainly be identified and stopped by school inspectors. School inspectors should be looking at science teachings to make sure they are evidence-based science.

Anybody who has something sensible or worthwhile to say should be able to say it calmly and soberly, relying on the words themselves to convey his meaning, without resorting to yelling.

As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

As a liberal, I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.

Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

Beauty arises out of human inspiration.

Bereavement is terrible, of course. And when somebody you love dies, it's a time for reflection, a time for memory, a time for regret.

Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.