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Headgear You cannot treat people differently on how they dress. Exceptof course if it creates offence in society. There are many ways in which religious practises seperate people from people , some of which cannot be seen , but it still seperates them from the community by its very nature One thing that seems to me is that people come to this country for a varity of reasns. Most say to escape political victimisation but endeavour to carry on living in the very way that created their prdiciment. Instead of embracing the country they chose to live in.So Jack Straw is right . The women have already cast aside the fact that they should not be educated, so why can't they show their face. RB

This is a very difficult issue, and we do all have to decide where we stand on it. Let's, for example, roll the clock back a few years: If people insisted on wearing Black Shirts and Nazi uniforms in the streets of Britain as insignia of their "identity", would we support their right to do so when such actions are perceived to be linked to a threat-in-the-making to "the British way of life" - ?
Another question: how can Muslim faith schools be required to open their doors to non-Muslims, when we are shown tv footage of rows of little boys in Muslim schools learning the Koran by rote? Which Non-Muslim parents are going to send their children into such an environment?
The devil in all this really is in the detail - and we MUST address it. If we are prevented from doing so, because Muslims "get angry", we have already lost the "open society". Non-Muslims have rights too.

Regarding the 1111 post in the God Delusion thread, I do not see any cosmic significance relating to the event. Or perhaps subconsciously, humans saw a pattern emerging as it got close to 1111, that humans stopped subconsciously.

After all, humans are used to spotting patterns whether they know it or not.

If the posts had suddenly stopped, perhaps its the electrons that got stuck in a elec-traffic jam. Or perhaps they suddeny had to dash off somewhere. Excellent, that it has broken all records.

A "controversial" title - 'the God delusion' is most certainly likely to create a sudden flux of postings as most people are "religious".

Quite related to the God Delusion thread, Muslim women are now subject to a fierce debate amongst their community after a comment by Jack Straw. Since it is their religion that states a veil is an appropriate clothing that promotes respect, it is equally difficult to communicate when the veil is covering their face.
Yes, it is the right of the Muslim woman to wear a veil, but surely it is quite extreme to cover the face except the eyes, especially when cohesion must be established between all faiths, in this diificult time in Earth's history.

As an atheist, I do find the covering of the face extremely unnecessary.

On a separate note, I do find challenging religious beliefs is the way forward when we are tackling fundamentalism on a wider scale, as blind faith is increasing everywhere.

What if the number of comments had stopped at 1111 -- why would that be significant? Quite a high proportion of numbers are patterned, if you don't have to predict in advance what the pattern will be. The number of posts probably paused at several numbers, and the one that was patterned is the one that somebody noticed. (There are several numbers, such as 666, 911, 1000, 1234, that might have been considered more "spooky" than 1111 -- and they would have been equally coincidental. Also note that the more people are watching the numbers, the more likely it is that some spurious pattern will be observed.)

There is overwhelming evidence that humans tend to see patterns in random data, and make systematic errors when trying to judge probabilities or assess whether a statistic is significant.

I suspect that skeptical people (about religion and more generally) do not see fewer patterns, and are not especially better at statistics -- they are just more aware that "gut feelings" or "spooky moments" (or "faith") are not a reliable basis on which to make decisions.

As a liberal atheist who supports freedom of religion, I see no reason to restrict people from wearing pretty much anything they like. (I especially like that wonderful outfit that Grayson/Claire Perry sometimes wears on Review :-)

Of course this doesn't include things that are directly associated with an offensive ideology like Nazism, but to compare a Nazi uniform with a hijab, burqa, turban etc. is quite disingenuous.

Some are using this "issue" as a cover to attack multiculturalism in general. The same thing happened in France fairly recently, and attacks against minorities increased as a result.

Jack Straw has form when it comes to saying things that are provocatively illiberal in order to draw attention to himself. He should be ignored.

As for whether a veil hinders communication, I think the reply of the guest who pointed out that you can't see the face of someone you're talking to on a mobile phone was spot on. There's no backlash about the use of phones and email for this reason, because -- separated from race and religion -- it is simply a non-issue.

Would you believe me if I said that I KNEW that we were 'not alone', and that I can PROVE it? Just for your information, this is a copy of an email that I recently sent to 'The Perimeter Institute' in Canada - a centre for scientific research by exceptional minds established by Mike Lazaridis, founder and CEO of Research In Motion. Try reading this with an open mind and then decide for yourself - I can assure you that every word of this posting is true, but how can my word mean anything to you? I guess you will just have to decide for yourself until the time that you get to hear the rest of my story!

I am a British citizen, but I have lived in Vietnam for the past four years (and as such I am completely cut off from direct contact to western media/academia). As is indicated in the title of this mail, I urgently require access to open and logical minds as I have some 'stunning news' to break to the world!

I know how hard this will be for you (or anyone) to believe, but two years ago I was contacted by 'an intelligence' that (among other things) had 'future knowledge' - AND I CAN PROVE IT AND EXPLAIN IT IN SIMPLE MATHS, PHYSICS AND LOGIC!!!!

I am NOT saying the I 'saw little green men from Mars' - I saw nothing of my 'contactors' but their 'effects' on things - however I did have very long and very detailed 'two-way conversations' during which we discussed everything from my childhood (which they already knew more about than me!), world politics and religion, music, television, sport, Nobel level science and 'The Future!'.

Not only did they 'redraw the atom' for me, but they also 'led me to' the small flaw in Einstein's 'E=mc2' (which not only explained 'how' they were able to talk to me through time, but also explained where the 'missing' ninety percent of the Universe's mass ISN'T!!!), but they were also able to 'foretell' that there would 'probably' be a giant tsunami (which occurred around seven months after 'they' had shown me 'tsunami related' 91热爆 news reports on my own TV!!!) AND enable me to 'predict' 'everything' about Hurricane Katrina/Rita/Greek letter hurricanes and a lot more besides!!!

I appreciate that it is easy to make such claims AFTER the events, however, as I mentioned above, I have PHYSICAL, SCIENTIFIC PROOF of all of the above claims - I have spent most of the time since 'First Contact' writing two books, which were intended to (a) explain the sequence of events leading up to and during First Contact (b) record many of the detailed conversations that we had during July 2004 (c) to 'predict' future events before they happened AND provide me with proof of the dates upon which my 'predictions隆炉 were made (Which I did by ensuring that all sections of my books were emailed to friends in the UK, where internet service providers are required by law to retain copies of all emails for at least one year!).

PLEASE do not dismiss me as some 'crank' - I most certainly am not! I am a perfectly sensible forty-three year old Quantity Surveyor who has spent the last fifteen years as an expat administering multi-million pound contracts on Power Generation projects throughout the world for multi-national engineering companies, however I walked away from that position two years following my 'First Contact' experience. I have always been 'exceptionally intelligent' - coming out with the highest average score in my county's equivalent of the American S.A.T.s, but IQ aside, until two years ago I was just 'an average guy'

PLEASE also do not assume that I am just some would-be writer who is trying to publicise a book - I am NOT trying to sell my story, I AM trying very hard to give the story to the world as soon as I possibly can, in a way that will not put my privacy and/or personal security in jeopardy. I would be perfectly happy to put my whole story onto the internet for the world to read if it wasn't for the fact that my story will inevitably make me a target for lunatics of every race, creed or nationality!

I am not asking you to simply believe me based on the few details above, BUT I AM IMPLORING YOU TO TEST ME AND MY STORY SCIENTIFICALLY, FACTUALLY AND LOGICALLY - The sooner the rest of the world knows what I know the better!

I cannot send my books by email, but I can send you far more information if I know that my mail will actually receive the attention it deserves = Please advise me where I should send such details. It would however be far easier to explain (and prove) my story if you have someone who I can meet with here at my home in Saigon .

I will end this mail by stressing once again that 'time is very much of the essence' - For reasons that I cannot explain by mail, I need to break this story soon, so I must advise you that I will also be forwarding similar details to other 'bodies'.

Best regards,

The 'coincidence' that links this story to 'The God Delusion' is that one of the emails in the first book referred to above was actually a copy of a mail that I sent to Prof. Dawkins on 12th July 2005, in which I explained to him:
(i) 'How Information Escapes From Black Holes' (i.e. The question that left Steven Hawking stumped and led to him conceding that his understanding of the Universe as reflected in 'A Brief History Of Time'is wrong!), and,
(ii) How I came to 'know' such things (i.e. that my new found friends with 'future knowledge' had explained it to me even before Steven Hawkins announced that he didn't know!).
Just for the record - I received neither response nor acknowledgement of my mail!

I suffered a bout of delusion only last Friday. I was Fox Talbot or was that Louis Daguerre, well anyway I invented photography. Then I became Eugene Atget closely followed by Edward Weston, of course there was the retrospective at the MOMA New York onto the V&A and interviewed by Kirsty Wark, out to lunch with Paul Mason.

Im much better now fully recovered - well how was I to know that all along I was Gary Winogrand.