Religious education is crucial in schools for British children to understand their history and culture, Richard Dawkinshas said.

The evolutionary biologist and confirmed atheist warned that it was virtually impossible to study English literature without knowing the background of Christianity.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, he was asked whether religious studies should be abolished in schools, over fears that schoolchildren were being brainwashed.

“I don’t think religious education should be abolished,” he said,

“I think that it is an important part of our culture to know about the Bible after all so much of English literature has allusions to the Bible, if you look up the Oxford English Dictionary you find something like the same number of quotations from the Bible as from Shakespeare.

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