Martin Gibson, perhaps you'd take take time out from sneering at John's spelling to explain what you meant by "And know one knows yours..." Then of course feel free to resume scorning those of us who can't communicate.

John, according to the Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, religions are memes - viruses of the mind that propagate themselves exactly like other viruses, preying on the weak and gullible. HERE's an essay by Dawkins that illustrates the insidious way that religion spreads, and the way that the innocence of children is abused in the process. It begins thus:

A beautiful child close to me [...] believes in Father Christmas, and when she grows up her ambition is to be a tooth fairy.[...] This little girl is of an age to believe whatever you tell her. If you tell her that bad children roast forever in hell, she will have nightmares. I have just discovered that [...] this sweet, trusting, gullible six-year-old is being sent, for weekly instruction, to a Roman Catholic nun. What chance has she?

Like sheep we can be steered to all kinds of assumptions, no matter how irrational. For instance, we accept (and many assume) that the north pole is on top of the world (except that you can get gimmick globes in NZ that have south at the top). Equally we accept media conventions whereby kids of four or five can be "muslim children", "protestant children" etc, In reality they lack the maturity to have decided what they hell they are, yet we are happy to project on to them the gullibilities of their parents and communities.

But like sheep again, the children do indeed, on the whole, turn out to be whatever their parents are. At this rate its going to be many years before we can claim herd immunity from the pernicious virus of religion. But even in the God-fearing USA there's hope. More than 90 per cent of the members of the US Academy of Sciences are atheists.