I try to resist watching The Big Questions on BBC TV (Sunday mornings), as it only makes me cross. They never give anyone time to develop an argument and it often ends up as a shouting match. Last Sunday (you have until the weekend to watch on i-player), the last question was “Is atheism an intolerant belief?”, so you knew it was going to be silly. Belief? Atheism is a lack of belief. Intolerant? Compared with tolerant religion, presumably. Intolerant of what? Yes, I admit to being intolerant of bullshit, hypocrisy, false reasoning, etc.

Currently, atheists are being blamed for just about everything. We’re nasty meanies, who have the temerity to question religionists and suggest they get things their own way too often, and at public expense. And it’s our fault that people murder one another, apparently. Yet, as one of my Twitter friends says, “Every day I don’t commit murder, theft, rape or adultery, I surprise even myself.”

The reaction to an increasingly questioning attitude towards religion has been either hurt petulance (like the guy from Theos on The Big Questions, who looked like he wanted his mummy), or vitriolic sarcasm, or lies. Terry Sanderson wrote about ‘The atheist bogeyman: a useful tool for reviving religion‘ in last week’s Newsline.

One example of a home-grown scare story, the Daily Mail trying to make something out of nothing, was a report on Camp Quest, the religion-free summer camp for kids. The headline, ‘Camp faithless: Is Britain’s first atheist summer camp harmless fun or should we be worried?’, said it all. Read the comments; few people seem to be worried – most welcomed the idea.

If there’s one thing that’s worse than an atheist, it’s an atheist woman. Women have been blamed for just about everything, since the establis