Opinions / Do you believe in God?

DR DAVID BELLAMY: I believe because someone or something must have cast the die which kick-started the whole process of creative evolution, of which I am a part. My road to Damascus was the wonder of the natural world.

KEN LUKOWIAK, author and Falklands veteran: I was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, but I realised God amounted to so much bunk which rated along with fairy stories. Religion is just an excuse to put us into teams against each other.

CRISTINA ODONE, editor, the Catholic Herald: Absolutely. When you believe in God, you leap into another dimension, a spiritual dimension that is beyond earthliness. You certainly believe in good and perhaps also in evil. I think this poor vicar must have reduced life to a sort of wishy-washy greyness.

NICHOLAS PARSONS: I certainly go to church and I have played a number of vicars in my time, but I'm still searching for what form God takes. If I do find out, I don't think it's going to be earth- shattering. I don't think I'm going to be stopped on my way to Damascus or Belsize Park, or wherever.

PROFESSOR HEINZ WOLFF: I believe in a power with supernatural qualities who in the end is responsible. Many people question how it is possible as a scientist to believe in God, but I would say the establishment of scientific laws didn't come from nothing. I don't think that there's anything incompatible about having God as a basis for a rational view.

CATRIONA CRAIG, student of alternative comedy: It's a sort of universal positive force, incorporating all those hippy concepts of love, peace, stillness, creativity. I feel it outside people and within them too.

LLWCH LLEAWG, Druidic bard of the Loyal Arthurian Warband: God is a pool of knowledge which is outside of time and which controls all knowledge about everything in the universe. It is something within the psyche of mankind. Druids believe in nature Gods. The spirit of life-force is our God.

DAVID ICKE: I don't believe in a God of the religious type. Religion is one of the greatest forms of mind control ever invented. I see God as a consciousness which appears in many forms - maybe a tree or a plant. God is not a man with a white beard sitting on a throne punishing people.

DEBBIE SHELTON, trainee accountant: I believe in fate. There is some sort of controlling power, and there's a path mapped out for everyone.

ALAN POWER, paranormal investigator: I divide God into two. There's God the creator of all things and then there's God the father. He has no shape or form. I don't go to church, because when you believe you don't have to. It's like being a football supporter - you can support your team from your living-room.

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