Phoney martyrs

Catholic harridan Christina Odone has joined those arguing that the religious are a persecuted minority in Britain today.
Has she not noticed that the bishops of the Church of England sit in our legislature as of right.
Or that our Head of State is also the Head of the Church of England.
Or that 'faith schools' are spreading across the country like a rash, actively encouraged by the Government.
Or that the Today programme has a 'Thought For The Day', from which non-religious contributions are banned.
She must be aware of the last because she has been a regular contributor to Thought For The Day.
It was in that slot that Ann Atkins once famously insulted gay listeners to the programme with her loathsome Aga-land bigotry.

On C4 news tonight, Odone cited as evidence the fact that poor Tony Blair was afraid to mention his religious beliefs from fear of being thought a nutter. (Presumably that was why he launched one of his election campaigns standing at a lectern in front of a stained glass window).
Coincidentally, 'nutter' was the term that one of Odone's fellow Christians applied to Richard Dawkins this week for having the temerity to argue the atheist case and criticise the harmful effects of religion. But with typically Christian charity he conceded that Dawkins was 'a highly intelligent man' but still a 'nutter'.

Since it is the Christians who have associated religious belief, on the hand, and atheism, on the other, with being a 'nutter', let me quote from one of my own secular heroes, R.D. Laing, writing in the Sixties when some of us were fool enough to believe that a better world could be built:

"That little old lady, tears streaming down her face, on her knees, wringing her hands, lips moving, no words uttered, pleading..........there is no one there.
Now she is listening. There is no one there.
Is she an hallucinating psychotic in the locked ward of a mental hospital?
Is she saying her prayers in a cathedral?
She could be the same person."