The simple fact is that the religious often know that they are standing on shaky ground, but have no other argument, while atheists do not claim to know all the answers and are willing to entertain different ideas. I always think that religious people look like they’ve been backed into a corner incredibly quickly if you start discussing God and alternatives – they’re expecting a fight. Fair enough, I’m not prepared to treat them with kid gloves.

This is being a bit disingenuous to all of the moderate religious people (such as the Bishop of Oxford that Dawkins spoke with in the second part of Root of All Evil), who are willing to talk about their religion, accept and answer questions, and admit that they are ‘selective’ about what they believe in the Bible.

As for agnostics, they just need to get off the fence. I can’t help but think that the amount of atheists and Humanists you could count in this country would shoot up if many of the people who currently describe themselves as agnostic had the courage to put some thought into what they believed or didn’t believe – and this would be helped if atheists were a bit more positive in their atheism, even though that sounds like an oxymoron. If agnostics all end up as true believers, that’s fine, but at least they’ve made their minds up.

I physically turned the other cheek but the irony was lost on him.

I think this was for three reasons:

1. He was an idiot.

2. I suspect he had actually read very little of the book (i.e. the bible) his rather aggressive interpretation of christianity was based on. I *have* read the bible, I think the King James version is an exceptional piece of writing but I don’t think that it’s contradictory stories, rules and glorification of various acts of genocide by the israelites in the distant past are what I would choose to base my belief system on.

I have also noticed that many of the more arduous, vocal and in-your-face christians that I have met seem to have a very sketchy knowledge of the supposed word of god (fine on the intolerance towards gays, fully versed in the oppression of women (despite often being women themselves) and seem to have no problem in professing to follow a religion based on peace and love, but still somehow manage to believe that killing people is ok).

3. Irony is generally wasted on those that need it most.

If Christians want to believe in stories, this is ok, but my personal search is for truth, and it is disingenuous of religious people to claim that they have truth on their side, when this palpably not so. It seems to me that most religions are fundamentally based on dishonesty, and yet Christians view dishonesty as wrong!

Incidentally, Intelligent Design has been banned from Dover High School, lets hope this sets the precedent for the rest of the US.

When the new guidelines were introduced, there was a predictable hoo-ha in the press about kids being taught to be atheists, which is not what it’s about – they’re supposed to be taught about humanism and other secular life stances – as religion should be taught. I’m on the Suffolk SACRE and we’re working on a new model syllabus to ensure that all kids are taught about atheism and humanism in schools. Some already covered the subject but only as an afterthought, usually for kids in Years 10 and 11 (15 years plus).

I wrote the following to the National Secular Society last week:

‘In my experience, RE (as taught in non-faith schools in an even-handed sort of way) is putting them off religion for life. Most young people aren’t stupid and can see how religions contradict each another. I go into schools to talk about atheism and Humanism, and have been approached by youngsters who’ll say things like they’re glad that I’ve expressed views similar to theirs, and they’re sick of being “got at” by religious people. University of Manchester research seems to show that it’s not RE in school we need to worry about but the influence of religious parents, though they’re having less success than they used to in passing on their irrationality. A Sikh woman who recently attended a SACRE meeting in our county complained that the young people in her faith were not interested in attending the temple. She was disappointed that we didn’t think it was the school’s job to encourage them to do so.’

Words like faith, belief, truth, fact and conviction all have their own meanings, and there’s room for all of them in any discussion about religion or atheism, though some atheists might argue that everything is fact and evidence, not belief and conviction.

As for what’s parallel or opposite, I’m now drawing lines and rectangles and equilateral triangles in my head and it’s getting very confusing so I’m going to stop.

Scientific fact – A piece of information that has yet to be disproved.

Thought of the day. If you were the size of an ant then the black ipod would look like the monolith from 2001.

Does this help the debate?

Atheists, maybe Humanists moreso, would argue that the ‘club’ is simply the Human community we all live in, and that a membership badge isn’t necessary. Atheists and Humanists have clubs such as the National Secular Society and British Humanist Association, but they’re not really my kind of club. While they provide educational resources and speak on TV whenever the BBC wants a non-believer to get into fisticuffs with an archbishop, they also provide precious little sense of community that appeals to me beyond political debate and god-knocking. The problem is that atheists are by their nature more independently minded, so much less likely to be interested in joining clubs.