'My response is that when creationists talk about god creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, that's going to make him blind. And I ask them, are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a god who's full of mercy.'
What are your views on vegetarianism? Michael Steer, student, Barnsley, South Yorkshire
I think that if there is such a thing as biological morality, you might say that we evolved as omnivores. We don't have long guts like a cow to digest nothing but vegetation. We have molars, which are there to grind up, but we also have canine teeth, which are good for eating meat. So I think that, biologically, we evolved as omnivores and not as vegetarians. However, as I get older, I get more and more distressed about what I discover about the way that animals are killed [for meat]. There are other reasons for being vegetarian as the world starves – you can get much more sustenance from vegetation than from feeding that vegetation to animals and eating the meat. But I am not a vegetarian myself.
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