The trouble with people of religion is that you assume that if people are not Catholic or HIndu they have to be something – and they have to behave in ways that are defined by a group. You claim to be a Conservative but you assume that no-one can arrive at conclusions based on individual thought. You also presume that ethics or morality are defined by theological teaching – and yet you have no means of proving that. I have never had belief in a God. I believe that altruism is something that is biologically hard-wired into us. Many evolutionary biologists have written about this.

All religions are highly revisionist. Many were highly brutal in the past (and recent past) but most have been refined and made acceptable by our common law – not the other way around. If you were transported back in time just 50 or 100 years your church would appear very different to you. Go back 200 years or less and you’d find people of ‘faith’ using God to justify the stoning of adulterers or the slaying of witches.

You are very welcome to your belief. But to presume that your faith has defined our modern ethical systems and norms is arrogant in the extreme. People have defined those norms – despite religions, not because of them.

‘I think you’ll find that the church – especially the Catholic Church – mandates a moral code. My personal view is that people should abide by an ethical code’

You seem to have a rather flimsy grasp of the nature of that ‘moral code’ – which informs your erroneous dichotomy between ethics and morals for the Christian.

‘Most Catholics, as you point out, ignore the church teaching on, for example, contraception and sex before marriage etc. You imply that you do too.’

Could you prove this?

‘or rape children in Church-managed “care homes”.

Ahh, the ad hominem again. Now, let me see, can I think of any truly evil people who were atheists… hmmmm…. Or anyone committing savage crimes whilst working for the state perhaps….hmmmmm. Childish.

‘As for plagairism, are you suggesting that before the Christian faith there was no moral or ethical dimensions in the lives of our ancestors. Was there no reciprosity or decency or love? Was there no altruism?’

Of course not. I’m suggesting before God there was none of these things. And that your very humanist faith is a theological position, springing from a collusion of particular Christian intellectual traditions.

‘As human being what distinguises us is our capacity for caring about each other and other sentient beings around us. We don’t need religions to tell us how to behave – because, frankly, they don’t do a very good job of it.’

It takes an impressive level of bigotry to dismiss the positive role of religion in the lives and works of so many billions of people – past, present and, I’m glad to say, future. Bravo.

And now I definitely shall leave it there. Thanks for the ‘debate’.

As for plagiarism, are you suggesting that before the Christian faith there was no moral or ethical dimensions in the lives of our ancestors. Was there no reciprosity or decency or love? Was there no altruism?

As human beings what distinguises us is our capacity for caring about each other and other sentient beings around us. We don’t need religions to tell us how to behave – because, frankly, they don’t do a very good job of it.

I always find it amusing how those who profess no religion yet seem to think they have a rock-solid understanding of other people’s faiths – and reject it accordingly. My Church is no more fond of telling people how to live their lives than the average humanist/atheist/secularist is of telling people how to live theirs – the difference is one of message, not manner.

And as for your own personal philosophy, as you enunciate here – it’s an honourable worldview, though you have just more or less plagiarised it from the very religious tradition that makes your own philosophical stance possible.

And at that I’ll leave it there – to aid your own surging stress levels, might I suggest a pint of mild?

I’d try to elaborate except, well, what is there to elaborate on? By the thrust of this article it seems you think life is all about some kind of self-preservatory avoidance of stress.

I, for reasons that you would reject at the outset, do not. And remain unimpressed at the banality of the suggestion.

And so we reach an impasse…