Help! It's the rough, secular beast!

It's a funny old world. Apparently some people find this controversial. I can't see why - if anybody would care to point out which part of Pat Condell's piece is unreasonable, I'd be interested to hear why they think so.

Speaking as a convinced secularist myself, I don't mind what people choose to believe in or not to believe in (so long as causing harm to others isn't a core element of their belief system*). I don't even mind if they try to persuade me to believe the same things, so long as they make the effort to explain and defend their beliefs with something approaching a rational argument and don't try to threaten or coerce me into agreement.

If their arguments are compelling, convincing, well-thought out ones, I'll probably listen with something like respectful attention. If someone's argument seems to be bizarre, unsupported by any convincing evidence or reasoning I might laugh or I might call that person silly, or even repellent if I consider their world-view to be particularly unpleasant. But that's all, and compared to the way some members of "faith communities" respond to opposing beliefs, I think it's quite mild and unthreatening - I won't call for them to be ostracised, killed or condemned to an eternity of unspeakable suffering in the name of the hypothetical creator of everything which exists.

If somebody wants to mock or question some deeply held belief which I hold, well, I've got a few options without going nuclear; I could choose to ignore the slight, or I could sharpen up my arguments and prepare a spirited defence, or even admit that I've been wrong and reconsider what I think in the light of what's been said. What I won't do is to demand that what I believe is so much more important than anybody else's opinion that it must never, ever be questioned.

You see, compared to some of the more militantly religious people I hear banging on from their pulpits, I think that secular humanists like me are harmless pussycats, open to doubt, reason, persuasion and argument. And, personally, I think that's better than closed-minded zealotry, based on little or no evidence. I don't often like to blow my own trumpet, but I'm quite happy, proud and comfortable to be a secular humanist in a world where the worst are full of passionate intensity. That's what I believe, anyway.

*of course, very few people actually think that their own system of beliefs is harmful but, to borrow a phrase from the faithful, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions....