It would useful if someone who had actually studied this stuff could confirm or dismiss that statement.

I've spent too much time hanging around with vapid academics to really care to be honest. There exists an intellectual deference which, 9 times out of 10, strikes me as wholly unjustified, especially when it comes to just discussing stuff like this - just as we would were we sitting in a bar over a pint or three irrespective of our qualifications.

The bottom line is falsifiable commonality; without it there would be no concensus, without conscensus there would be no language, and without language there would be no culture. Language hangs concepts on things, and things on concepts, but for words to work there must be concensus, out of which comes dialogue, dialectic and enquiry. Language can create whole other worlds too - through language we have created God and Religion; through Language we have created Cartoons and Supernatural Ballads. In one way I'd argue Top Cat and Tam Lin are more real that God could ever be; God only comes into his own as a Fictional character and as a metaphor of a certain scientific arrogance that assumes we know it all. Earlier on someone said humanity is still in its adolescence - I'd go along with that, but only because of my innate optimism that one day we'll get there.

Meanwhile, religion remains entrenched in our culture as both folklore and superstition (always optional - never true!) and the more secular things get, so it seems the more people reach out for unknowable. The folkloric aspects of death stand as a vivid testimony to this - from heartbreaking child-graves festooned with windmills and teddy bears, to elaborate way-side shrines to those killed in RTAs. The outpouring of collective grief after the death of Princess Diana back in 1997 was folkloric spirituality at its most explicitly spontaneous.

Still, as an atheist caught up in such considerations I'm not about to respect religion nor yet the religious, rather acknowledge that there persists an urge that rests alongside the other less savoury attributes of our humanity as (at best) a particularly grim necessity which (once upon a time) threw up great works of art, architecture, literature and music - though rather less so in this day and age. Religion and God are as human as Fish and Chips; things of wonder, but ultimately a matter of personal choice. With that in mind, I will persist in my argument for a common cause that unites us all irrespective of that which divides us, and of this greater common reality I will live in celebration until my last breath.

In Bristol Cathedral last week I even joined in with The Lord's Prayer whilst photographing the various carvings of The Elder Lady Chapel, including a particularly fine 'green man' (see HERE for one of the pictures) which one usher was very keen on telling me was a figure of folklore and pagan myth. Ordinarily I would have taken great delight in telling them otherwise, but on that day I just let them get on with it; it was far too nice a day for facts!