"In other words, Mr. Bridge, your words are offensive - as usual. Ever notice how almost all the religion threads at Mudcat are started by people who hate religion? We religious Mudcatters rarely start one - we'd be quite happy just being left alone, but we also aren't about to remain silent when the bigots spew their crap."

Well thank goodness you don't have the right not to be offended! We non-religious mudcatters (and how I hate the way religion obliges me to define myself in the negative - even "a-theist" suggests that I'm without something) would also be very happy to be left alone, but alas organised religion doesn't allow this. All schools in England and Wales, for example, are obliged to include a daily act of collective worship. I can't go into my town without being regaled with large crosses, clanging church bells and wayside pulpits everywhere I go (we don't have a mosque in Bude otherwise I could have added those tedious calls to prayer). The archbishops and pope have no difficulty getting their pronouncements aired on all the public media (and my atheistic BBC licence fee helps to facilitate this). Religion is in our faces all the time and it's not a matter of choice. Even in secular nations such as ours religion is the public default position. So please don't ask to be left alone. That request is legitimate only for private, inner reflection, not for public religion, which needs all the opposition, for a change, that we atheists can muster. Anything else would be seriously unhealthy.




"The 'God-Delusion' people are brothers and sisters under the skin to those who lump all Moslems together as being responsible for the 11 Sept attacks."

Well excuse me but I'm a "God-Delusion" person and I abhor the way in which all Muslims are sometimes lumped together in the way you describe. Why, in my experience it's people of religions other than Islam who commonly do this lumping.