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

“It’s an important part of our history. So much of European history is dominated by disputes against rival religions and you can’t understand history unless you know about the history of the Christian religion and the Crusades and so on.

“I would not abolish religions education, I think I would substitute it for comparative religion and Biblical history and religious history.

“Comparative religion is very valuable partly because the child learns that there are lots of different religions not just the one they were brought up with. They learn they are all different and they can’t all be right, so maybe none of the are right. Critical thinking is what we need.”