The very idea of supernatural magic - including miracles - is incoherent, devoid of sensible meaning.
I don't think that it's up to government to dictate what people should wear.
A universe with a creator would be a totally different kind of universe, scientifically speaking, than one without.
I've always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.
Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.
Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.
I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' or 'Islamic children.'
If you were to actually travel around schools and universities and listen in on lectures about evolution, you might find a fairly substantial fraction of young people, without knowing what it is they disapprove of, think they disapprove of it, because they've been brought up to.
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?
Of course in science there are things that are open to doubt and things need to be discussed. But among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know.
The supernatural is ubiquitous in children's entertainment, from Grimm and Hans Andersen to Disney and 'Harry Potter.'
We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality - you're told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It's almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren't that interested in whether Jesus was real.
I think it's misleading to use a word like 'God' in the way Einstein did. I'm sorry that Einstein did. I think he was asking for trouble, and he certainly was misunderstood.
What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?
When brains get sufficiently big, presumably, as human brains have, consciousness seems to emerge.
I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.
You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.
