When I was a kid if I was unhappy, I'd stroke my dog. I was into bringing injured birds into the house, RSPCA activities. And the relationship that you have with animals, you can get that from your children: that unquestioning love and adoration and equal need.

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.