"Question: Do you have children, Steve S? Or are you the proverbial childless auntie who knows it all?

In my case, as I've written before in other places, my daughter at the age of 12 started going to church. I didn't discourage it but I never went with her; as it happens I don't go to church, per se, and haven't since I left home the last time when I was 19, and I'm coming on 75 now.

So I have little patience with your stance. It reminds me more of propagandizing on a theme than of normal role modeling."

I find it depressingly frequent that religious people have little patience with the atheistic stance. Oh, well. As I only ever post under my real name on forums I'm a bit reluctant to share certain elements of my private life but I'll make one small exception. Yes, I have two children, aged 30 and 31. They went to schools at which religious worship was foisted on them (and some rather more enlightened religious education, I should add). We had no choice in the matter of schools as we live in a remote rural area with few schools within a reachable radius. We discussed whether to exercise our right to withdraw them from the worship, but we decided that this would have set them conspicuously apart from their fellow pupils (and the children agreed). It would have been a very uncomfortable arrangement for them, as you can imagine, what with them sitting outside the assembly hall on their own every morning. Pragmatism had to outweigh principle, and I should like to thank you for challenging me on this: it gives me this perfect opportunity to show how even we "militant atheists" can be horribly squeezed by organised religion.

I'm sure you worked your own conscientious path with your daughter. It isn't easy, any of this, for parents with consciences, and it's organised religion that, alone, creates the difficulty.