A Times post by Carol Sarler<\/a> entitled “Enough religion. Stop shoving it down our throats”<\/strong> made the point that, although religious belief and practice have all but died out in the UK, Good manners today disallow the questioning of a man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s belief as sternly as they disallow jokes about it and to offend by either means may be, at least, a sacking offence or, at most, a matter of law. It has become a sine qua non of courteous interaction that those of us without a religious bone in our bodies must defer to those who have, and even determined antitheists are to hush our mouths lest we \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cause offence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (in vain might we cry of the offence that we often feel). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another Times blog on the same date (well, OK, it was 13 September, but there’s only so much effort you can put into keeping up with religion blogs and the Times correspondents are all too bloody reasonable to inspire rants) by Ruth Gledhill<\/a> had the title “Save our Soldiers from Religion”<\/strong>. Talking about a North Korean complaint that religion is spreading like a cancer through its forces, Ruth Gledhill says:<\/p>\n Don’t delude yourself that it couldn’t happen here. Carol Sarler…. is by no means a lone voice in bewailing the manifold sins and wickedness of religion in the UK. Sarler and Dawkins should take note of the apparent truth that nothing propels a religion, in particular Christianity, to success like persecution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Ruth Gledhill goes on to print out an anti-religious diatribe from a supposed official North Korean military manual, linking it, in an uncharacteristically bizarre aside, to the McCanns. I am going to ignore that, out of politeness, because it doesn’t make logical sense.*)<\/p>\n
\n(“At the moment, there are in Britain more practising anglers than practising Anglicans”) religious issues are constantly in the media. In a context that assumes that we should all respect the faiths of anyone who has one.<\/p>\n