My point was that there is no argument in the first place. That said, perhaps there is a sincere misunderstanding on my behalf.

Would you like to clarify the statement "As I said the argument that all religion is a fairy tale has yet to be won."

It could be me being thick and misreading/representing you.

I'm exiled. When the census figures come hopefully I can invite this tosspot to leave 'his' country.

Clarification as requested:
Those of us who don't believe in the big sky fairy cannot claim to have "won" the argument when we are still in the minority. There is still much work to be done.
I'm an atheist, but I also believe in democracy. I'm happy to live in a multicultural society but recognise that for more than half my countrymen their culture includes the following of one or other religion. I don't like it and I will continue to argue with them. But I think that, provided they don't hurt anyone or break any laws, they should be accommodated because I believe in democracy.

Rather presumptuous of him to call himself 'Welshmen'

schizophrenic?

For the last few hundred years, at least, 'christians' have been hypocritically walking away from the more uncomfortable parts of their religion.

My fault... I misread you...

I agree with you (and have argued. more or less, the same).... So well said...

So believers are evil hypocrites if they interpret religious texts in a way that fits with their knowledge and lived experience, and evil fundamentalists if they don't?

It might be worth adding that Mailites and others who identify Britain as a 'Christian country' actually mean 'protestant'. And a fairly narrow range of protestant at that: essentially anglican with some unfrightening non-conformists around the fringe. In some parts of the UK there's still massive inequality and institutional discrimination against catholics. I doubt the average Mailite identifies his beloved homeland with catholicism, quakerism or seventh-day adventism.

It's clearly something you feel very strongly about, which is fine, but you seem a little trigger happy, my advice is to calm down a little.

This is a dilemma. I have no desire to see young people indoctrinated but I also would not wish to deprive them of the magnificence of the King James bible, or the allusions to religion in Shakespeare, Keats, Manley Hopkins or James Joyce. I do not want them to be barred from seeing religious art. I certainly don't want to abandon our laws, which it seems to me take the most sensible and secular elements of Abramic teaching and place them in a civic context.

I think that prayers in parliament, or council meetings, the wearing of crucifixes do not denote a religious, as opposed to secular society. I want to keep a secular society. But a secular society which understands its own origins, roots and principles, which can look at the achievements of religious people in the past and strip away the faith but appreciate the human genius. I don't have to believe in god to marvel at the work of Grinling Gibbons, or a medieval cathedral.

After all, when I marvel at the pyramids I don't instantly want to worship Re or mummify my cat, do I?

Britain is a Christian country in one, very important sense.

For most of the last thousand years the legislative, judicial, artistic and literary life of the country was inextricably linked to religion. The fact that I, and others, deplore religion and its effects doesn't alter that.

As a result we have a society, polity and heritage that have ideas and symbols of a particular religion ingrained into them.

This is a dilemma. I have no desire to see young people indoctrinated but I also would not wish to deprive them of the magnificence of the King James bible, or the allusions to religion in Shakespeare, Keats, Manley Hopkins or James Joyce. I do not want them to be barred from seeing religious art. I certainly don't want to abandon our laws, which it seems to me take the most sensible and secular elements of Abramic teaching and place them in a civic context.

I think that prayers in parliament, or council meetings, the wearing of crucifixes do not denote a religious, as opposed to secular society. I want to keep a secular society. But a secular society which understands its own origins, roots and principles, which can look at the achievements of religious people in the past and strip away the faith but appreciate the human genius. I don't have to believe in god to marvel at the work of Grinling Gibbons, or a medieval cathedral.

After all, when I marvel at the pyramids I don't instantly want to worship Re or mummify my cat, do I?

I quite like Greek mythology. Doesn't mean I've had to lay seige to Troy.