Faith is the grip that clergy have over you. It's the invisible rope around your neck that pulls you along the road they want you to travel, for thei… - Pat Condell

I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise, ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out harmless aspects of it; which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian. I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage, not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays are true, but I wouldn't be without them either. I like churches, especially the sound of church bells, and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find. Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited. The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close. It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture. It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded.

As a mere man, Jesus was almost useless to them. All he could offer were words of compassion and wisdom, and what earthly good would they be to the men who run the Church? That would be like handing a slide rule to a monkey. So they needed to make him a god, but of course they already had a god, the same one they've got today, the fictional psychopath of the desert. So they had to find some way of conflating Jesus, author of the Sermon on the Mount, with this horrible monstrous entity of vengeance and death. Quite a theological challenge that was always going to take some specialist bullshitting, but they finally managed it in the fourth century when they solidified the idea of the Trinity, the three gods in one, or the three god trick, as I like to think of it, the classic Christian con - God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit; although if you're like me you may prefer the atheist trinity; that's God the imposter, God the fraud, and God the wholly phoney. Wholly as in entirely, completely, absolutely, one hundred percent fake, false, and phoney baloney, not to put too fine a point on it.

It's often claimed that many people in the West are converting to Islam, and it's true that some are, but it's also true that many Muslims in the West are leaving Islam, but you don't hear so much about them for obvious reasons. Some of them have been brave enough to make themselves known, and reach out to help other Muslims who want to escape the tyranny of their religion, and, like them, it's the religion I have a problem with, not the people. So no, I don't hate Muslims — thanks for asking — I wish them well. Even the fanatics who stand at the roadside with their dopey little banners and bulging eyeballs, calling for death to the West — I even wish those boneheads well, in that I wish them good mental health, if that isn't too wildly optimistic. And of course I know that there are lots of moderate, peaceful Muslims. Indeed, many of them are so moderate and peaceful, they're invisible and silent, and that is part of the problem. And just because there are lots of peaceful Muslims, it doesn't mean the religion itself is not an aggressive, fascist ideology that threatens all our freedoms, nor does it mean that western governments aren't falling over themselves to make excuses for it, pretending that Islam has nothing to do with the violence inspired and sanctioned by its scripture, and repeatedly carried out in its name.