It appears our success at the High Court has started a national conversation about secularism – and that can only be a good thing. When there is a comment facility available under these attacks, the popular opinion is overwhelmingly in our favour.

We are going to be criticizing your scriptures, lampooning your prophets, and laughing at your deeply held beliefs for many years to come. You can complain about us. You can ignore us. Or you can respond in kind with ridicule and laughter of your own.

"There is no specific power to say prayers or to have any period of quiet reflection as part of the business of the council."

But in the real world where societies are plural, then it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And we should deal with those clashes rather than suppress them. Important because any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. The right to ‘subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism’ is the bedrock of an open, diverse society.

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.

“It’s Part of their Culture” - Reading Nick Cohen in the light of the Jaipur affair

This article was published in New Statesman, 23rd Jan 2012, under a different title. [Also in Polish]

Redundancy Reduction and Pattern Recognition: Richard Dawkins's Answer to the Annual Edge Question

Afterword from Lawrence Krauss' New Book
A Universe From Nothing

I suspect that there is life elsewhere in the universe, but it is probably extremely rare and isolated on far-flung islands of life, like a celestial Polynesia.