OK, now I have checked, and I was right about Einstein: thoroughly religious. The quote Botten found was about his non-belief in an anthropomorphic god. And he also made it clear that his scientific endeavours were closely related to his religion.

Oh, and here's the third of the pill's inventors that I mentioned: John Rock. Interestingly, the pill wasn't condemned by the Vatican until eight years after it was first made available to the American public, and ten years after Pope Pius XII partially approved its use.

Back to the ring thing for a moment.

Quite a lot of what we are told is part of Islam and other Xeno-religious orders are not actually directly related to the religions but to culture, so the whole debate gets a bit fatuous.

Frankly the school should set its target high, either no deviation from the school uniform under any circumstances for all or allow personal cultural/religious icons. I'd say the former is a much more wholesome solution for young minds and will reduce ethnic divisions in the classroom.

I like some of your thinking here - however, what seems mad to me is that the other fella is using his Atheism as a religion!

The bad part of Religion is not the belief structure, but the controlling aspect of it. The way religious leaders use religion as a way of getting people to do things which are just daft (from eating fish on a friday or not eating pigs and being extra nice to cows to blowing yourself up). However, many Atheists use the same procedure to just make people miserable!

In my book, if you don't believe in religion, that's great, but don't go pestering people who do believe in something just to make yourself feel justified! - and this is from someone who doesn't believe in religion!

Not eating pigs isn't daft: before modern hygiene methods, it was quite risky. And eating fish at least once a week isn't daft either: it's good for you.

The controlling aspect of religion tends to be a problem in places and times where the religion is an arm of a state or vice versa. In non-religious places and times, we still have exactly the same problems, only it's the state by itself that causes them. One might almost start thinking that problems such as the Spanish Inquisition or the arrest of Galileo were a result of the dominant government of the times — which is what the Church was — rather than uniquely religious phenomena.