I have to confess that I find religion - of any flavour - to be completely baffling. I didn't understand it as a child and I don't understand it now, as a 67 year old adult.

I was travelling on a bus the other day and it stopped outside an old church. The church was a substantial stone built structure - probably built around 150 years ago. It was all locked up - with steel grilles on all the windows - and I would guess that someone had turned the key, in the lock of the substantial wooden door, for the final time, a generation or two ago. Outside was a board - originally painted red with gold lettering - now weathered to a sort of reddish brown colour with the gold paint peeling off. The board gave the name of the church, the denomination (some sort of non-conformist outfit), times of various services and the name of the resident minister (the "Rev. Fred Smith" or something).

All I could think was: what a waste! What a waste of money, time, energy, land, stone and craftsmanship (I hope the masons got paid well). All that effort so that a handful of people could turn up once or twice on a Sunday to perform meaningless rituals and make obeisance to a (probably) non-existent deity. Humans are a peculiar species! It's time we locked up all of the churches for the final time, learn how to confront reality - with all its messiness and uncertainty - and start to learn how to live on this planet without destroying it!