Muriel Gray wrote in the Sunday Herald about Home Secretary John Reid’s recent warning to Muslims to look out for signs that their children were being ‘radicalised’, “… and should they come home with bags of fertiliser and detonators, they might have a bit of a word with them.”  How ‘fundamental’ do your beliefs have to be to represent a danger to society? As Muriel points out, ‘fundamentalism’ is an accepted part of British life, as long as we encourage faith schools and avoid discouraging the isolation of minority communities who try to keep their children from being influenced by modern secular, liberal values.

How often do you challenge the rambling street preachers, the noisy ones who spend their days shouting threats of damnation at passers-by, or waving pamphlets around? A gentleman at Brixton Tube station offers everyone eternal salvation as an alternative to the Victoria Line in the mornings. I haven’t asked him if I can still change for the Circle Line. A few years ago, a particularly unpleasant bunch of street preachers in Leeds declared that all passing shoppers were going to burn in hell, the women also being whores and jezabels.

E-mail: mail@suffolkhumanists.org.uk Event description: Suffolk Humanist and Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource tutor Margaret Nelson will contribute to a SIFRE Forum of Faiths on Death & Dying. Lecture Theatre 2, Suffolk College, Rope Walk, Ipswich. Map link: tinyurl.com/gxolz

Through Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource, I’ve been invited to lead a 20 minute school assembly, followed by a 40 minute class. I’ve done school assemblies before (though not often), but this one will be a first because it’ll be in a primary school. It’s not a church primary school – that would be unusual – but a county primary school. I’ll be talking to children from years 1 to 5, that’s from 5 to 11 years of age.

An organisation called Truth in Science has … sent resource packs to all UK secondary school science departments. It promotes the idea of intelligent design – that there was an intelligence behind the creation of the universe. Humanists and a Christian think tank want the government to tell teachers to keep “a wholly scientific perspective”. Link: BBC NEWS | Education | New challenge over school science They’re persistent, these ‘Intelligent Design’ nuts, but wouldn’t know the truth if they fell over it.

A Suffolk Humanists member who’s not on the Internet contacts me the old-fashioned way – by letter. His latest went as follows: Identity Crisis I chanced upon the word ‘godless’ in a dictionary, which gave three definitions: ‘Refusing to acknowledge God’. I recognise myself. No problem. ‘Lacking a God’. If I have already stated my belief that God does not exist (see above), how can I be lacking one?

In The God Delusion, the scientist Richard Dawkins sets out to attack God “in all his forms”. He argues that the rise of religious fundamentalism is dividing people around the world, while the dispute between “intelligent design” and Darwinism “is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science”. Link: BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight Home | The God Delusion See a forum discussion about the book on this site.

Both Joseph Ratzinger and the Islamists calling for his decapitation believe they have direct access to an invisible supernatural being called “God”. Both believe this God wills them to make decisions that have led to the horrific deaths of tens of thousands of people. Both believe this God finds secular democratic Europe disgusting, an atheistic bog dominated by a “culture of death.” Both hate feminism and gay rights and sexual freedom.

From Martin Henderson**, North Yorkshire Humanists Campaign Group:** There have been some developments recently on enforced religious worship in schools, as required by the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act. This has been highlighted by the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee advice to the government in relation to ECHR Section 9. The government seem poised to largely ignore this advice in order to preserve the status quo. See the BHA submission on their website.

By email: ‘I am currently having my will updated (in Suffolk) and mention that I want a Humanist celebrant for my funeral. In the draft the solicitors have written that I want a “humorous celebrant”. Can it be true!!!’ We aim to please, but can’t guarantee any laughs.