That is a question with too complicated an answer. - Philip Pullman

"...Will, I used to come here in my Oxford and sit on this exact same bench whenever I wanted to be alone, just me and Pan. What I thought was that if you - maybe just once a year - if we could come here at the same time, just for an hour or something, then we could pretend we were close again-because we would be close, if you sat here and I sat just here in my world -"
"Yes," he said, "as long as I live, I'll come back. Whenever I am in the world, I'll come back here -"

"Religion is, as I say, something universal and something human, and something impossible to eradicate, nor would I want to eradicate it. I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.

Religion is at its best when it is a long way from political power. The founder of the Christian religion — or, the founders of the Christian religion, Jesus and St. Paul — were both clear about this. "Blessed are the meek." "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." St. Paul is perfectly clear that the highest Christian virtue is charity, not patriotism, not martial valor, not exalting your class, your group, your race above others, but charity. That's the highest virtue. When religion remembers that and acts accordingly, it does good.

But religion, at various points in human history, notably the history of western Europe and the history of some parts of the Middle East more recently, has acquired political power, and put its hands on the levers of social authority. It decides who shall live and who shall die. It decides how we shall dress, what we shall be allowed to read, whether we shall go to war, and so on. When religion acquires that power, it goes bad very rapidly."

When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.