Joe, that pint will have to wait a while. I was in California about two years ago, but found that your wine was better than your beer, so unless we can drink pints of pinot without my wife noticing and berating me.......

Interestingly, I too don't consider myself an atheist but that is for one simple reason. Atheism as I understand its literal description would mean there is nothing other than what we can experience. If that were the case, the answer is actually chaos. Chaos doesn't work because of one simple fact; f=ma.

The laws of physics work, all the time. Sure, they need refining from time to time and whilst we can get our head around Newtonian physics because we can measure it, we are still struggling a bit with quantum mechanics. Time will improve our understanding.

Now... my issue with organised religion is the problem of my last sentence. Nobody updates scriptures in the light of further understanding. People 2,000+ years ago wrote what they wrote as being the science of the day. It explained what we experienced and gave solutions to those things we don't understand. Sprinkle a bit of mind control for good measure and there you have it. Religion in a bun with fries.

But, like the fast food merchants themselves, changing or veering from the recipe is fraught with problems. So instead it is easier to tell people they actually like the gherkin rather than change it for tomato. If big macs aren't popular any more, have an advertising campaign rather than accept people have moved on from big macs. Awful analogy I know, but I am making it up whilst typing and I am not the shiniest trumpet in the band.

I reckon my analogy works though. Easier to convince people of what you want to give them rather than make what you give them relevant. Science, luckily, cannot work like that. Einstein may be revered but some of what he put forward has been discredited. Not because he was wrong but because we now have more information with which to refine. Newton wrote of absolute distance, absolute time and absolute motion. Einstein wasn't initially famous for what he put forward with relativity, but his fame was that he blew classical physics apart and a fundamental precept of the Principia with it... Now, how many times a week do theologians edit the supernatural sections of scriptures?

We are left with wonderful stories, in the King James version wonderfully written too. But to say the "science" explanations contained in biblical stories are physically true is to leave the room as far as any discussion is concerned. That's my problem with some of our correspondents. I defend to the death your right to think that scriptures are true, but under no circumstances (other than JC himself popping up again?) will I take such a view seriously. I don't have to respect your view, just your right to have your view, (whoever you are.) Sadly, pandering to superstitious waffle holds back both society and science and perhaps that is inexcusable. Pushing your views on your children may or not be wrong. After all, my parents were methodists and I live in the home town of Wesley, (you should see the coaches full of american tourists each and every day near us...) but I am what I sometimes call rational and sometimes call indifferent. Luckily, kids can grow up untainted by their upbringing. And let's all thank God for that!