Is religion the root of all Evil? All Evil? Well I don't know about that!

But what if religion is true? Surely sectarian indoctrination wouldn’t be child abuse if it saved the child’s immortal soul? Despite the smug presumptuousness of that, I can almost sympathise, if you sincerely believe your religion is the absolute truth. Let me, then, be ambitious if not presumptuous, and try to shake your belief.

Why do you believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head? Alas, the Yorkshire Ripper’s murders were ordered by the perceived voice of Jesus inside his head. The human brain is a consummate hallucinator, and hallucinations are a poor basis for real world beliefs. Or perhaps you believe in God because life would be intolerable without him. That’s an even weaker argument. Lots of things are intolerable and it doesn’t make them untrue. It may be intolerable that you are starving, but you can’t eat a stone by believing – no matter how passionately and sincerely – that it is made of cheese.

By far the favourite reason for believing in God is the argument from improbability. Eyes and skeletons, hearts and nerve cells are too improbable to have come about by chance. Man-made machines are improbable too, and designed by engineers for a purpose. Surely any fool can see that eyes and kidneys, wings and blood corpuscles must also be designed for a purpose, by a master Engineer? Well, maybe any fool can see it, but let’s stop playing the fool and grow up. It is 146 years since Charles Darwin gave us what is arguably the cleverest idea ever to occur to a human mind. He demonstrated a beautiful, working process whereby natural forces, by gradual degrees and with no deliberate purpose, forge an elegant illusion of design, to almost limitless levels of complexity.

Richard Dawkins is a brilliant scientist and I find very little fault with his reasoning.He is however lacking in compassion in my opinion.

I also have felt irritated by the senseless babble of the born again and wanted to poke a hole in their fragile sense of belief. In the past I have brought religious people to tears and even sent a Catholic priest on a three day drinking binge. But that was me in my youth. Today I do not feel the need to challenge people's faith. I tend to respect their choices now just so long as they do not try to thrust their beliefs into my face. If they don't bother me I won't shatter their sense of peace.

It is a big beautiful, diverse world and I would not want to reject people's friendship just because we have differing religious beliefs. Of course if they are republicans then I will have to decide on a case by case basis if I can like them or not. I mean I do have my standards!