We chase "fast culture" at our peril - unusual words and difficult art are good for us, says Will Self.

New support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience.

If you turn on the news tonight and hear of a bomber slaughtering civilians anywhere from Nigeria to the London Underground, I can reassure you of one point: the bombers will not be readers of Richard Dawkins.

Their assault illustrates the extent to which defenders of religion still dominate our press, the brutal retaliation exacted on clever opponents of faith and the incorrigible stupidity of Sayeeda Warsi's claim about "militant secularism" last week.

I can’t help wondering at the quality of journalism which sees a scoop in attacking a man for what his five-greats grandfather did.

Which, talking of dissimulation, brings me to Richard Dawkins, a fanatic disguised as a scientist.

The Vatican feels really really really really bad about what its priests did in Ireland. Really it does. It’s so so so so so sorry. It’s wounded to the core; it’s devastated; it’s super-upset; it’s crying into its pillow every night; it can hardly eat.

Unless…

'... the backlash itself is so full of strawmen, which get recycled with each new instantiation and then harden into the conventional wisdom.'