Indeed I’ve always thought one of the great advantages of humanism is precisely that it doesn’t need a priesthood, it doesn’t need constant reinforcement. People can come to it themselves as a logical conclusion. And many people do. It’s one of its strengths. He had a respect for Christian belief but I remember one of the things he said: he said he’d never met a Christian who believed in the existence of heaven and hell as much as they believed in the existence of Australia.

Christopher Hitchens interviewed