Beginning under the Roman Empire, intellectual leadership in the West had been provided by Christianity. In the middle ages, who invented the first universities - in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge? The church.

During the first 13 centuries after the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, no one thought of setting up a creche to celebrate Christmas. The pre-eminent Christian holiday was Easter, not Christmas.

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.

Schools ought to teach students to challenge secular ideologies masquerading as science in the classroom.

In the '70s, there were economists who argued that seat belts were causing people to drive faster and kill more pedestrians. But after 15 or 20 years of research, we can now conclude that's actually not true. Seat belts, on net, do make people safer. So, on an evidence-based process, we should have people wear seat belts.

Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.

I'm enormously interested to see where neuroscience can take us in understanding these complexities of the human brain and how it works, but I do think there may be limits in terms of what science can tell us about what does good and evil mean anyway, and what are those concepts about?

The soft power of science has the potential to reshape global diplomacy.