Societies without God are more benevolent

The pope's visit to Britain has been the perfect excuse for many commentators to traduce secularism

Writing sometime around the 10th century BC, the furious author of Psalm 14 thundered against those who say there is no God. "They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." If the denunciations of wicked atheists coming from today's apologists for religion are any guide, the spirit of Iron Age Israel is abroad in 21st-century Britain.

In advance of the pope's visit, clergymen and commentators are deploying every variety of bogus argument against those who advocate the superiority of secularism. Edmund Adamus, director of pastoral affairs for the Catholic diocese of Westminster, led the way when he denounced the "wasteland" secularism produced. If he had been condemning the atheist tyrannies of communism and fascism, I would have no complaint. However, Adamus was not objecting to Cuba, China or North Korea, but to the wasteland of secular, democratic Britain "with its ever-increasing commercialisation of sex, not to mention its permissive laws advancing the 'gay' agenda".

Rightwing columnists and, depressingly but predictably in these appeasing times, leftwing journalists have joined the moaning chorus. The arguments of Geoffrey Robertson QC and Professor Richard Dawkins that the cops had grounds to ask the pope to account for his church's failure to stop the rape of children in its care drove them wild. "The hysterical and abusive nature of some of the attacks on the pope will do nothing but discredit secularism," said Andrew Brown in the Guardian. "I accept, of course, that lots of secular humanists are tolerant and reasonable people," says the more restrained and judicious Stephen Glover of the Mail. "But there is a hard core which embraces and promotes atheism with the blind fervour of religious zealots."

Not that I agree with Robertson and Dawkins that the police should arrest the pope. The best way for anyone caught up in religious crimes to make amends is to convert to secularism. The odds are that they will be better people for it.

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BBC: Humans' early arrival in Britain

Researchers have discovered stone tools in Norfolk, UK, that suggest that early humans arrived in Britain nearly a million years ago - or even earlier.

The find, published in the journal Nature, pushes back the arrival of the first humans in what is now the UK by several hundred thousand years.

Environmental data suggests that temperatures were relatively cool.

This raises the possibility that these early Britons may have been among the first humans to use fire to keep warm.

They may also have been some of the earliest humans to wear fur clothing.

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Hundreds to demonstrate against Sharia and religious laws on 20 June in London

Hundreds will be demonstrating in London against Sharia and religious laws and in support of secularism and universal rights on Sunday 20 June 2010. The rally organised by the One Law for All Campaign will be held from 1400-1600 hours at Richmond Terrace junction with Whitehall opposite Downing Street (SW1A 2).

On the day, the Campaign will make public its new report entitled: Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights. In the report One Law for All outlines what Sharia law is, how it is practised in Britain and exposes the way in which Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals are circumventing British law and human rights legislation. The report also reveals the gross injustices to women and children in particular and reiterates the need to end Sharia and all religious courts on the basis that they work against, and not for, equality and human rights.

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