The onus is on someone who claims something exists, to prove it. In the absence of proof (or at least compelling evidence), belief is just an opinion.

Are you saying that only those who believe in divine intervention uphold human rights?

They are more likely to be those who don’t believe in divine intervention.

Well…

It’s precisely because it’s pure superstition that I love it.

I know the difference between Catholic dogma and superstition. I spent five years confined to a convent for most of the day.

Not at all. I am a very balanced person with the polar opposite of an addictive personality. I never smoked, was never remotely tempted to try addictive drugs, am completely puzzled by gambling, don’t seen the point of card games or board games or how they can be fun, and really don’t know how people can become drunks.

It is precisely because of this predominant personality trait that religion has never engaged me at all.

It’s not something I decided on in youth after rational assessment – I was just never attracted to it at all.

Religious personalities are, in psychiatry, addictive personalities. This is not to say that religious persons such are yourself as prone to drink or drugs – far from it. But if you were raised in a different family and different society, instead of becoming a priest you might have become a drunk, or a gambler.

Through your work you might have noticed, as I have when observing my contemporaries, that those who are prone to drink and drugs tend, when they go into rehab and recover, to substitute their former addiction with dependency on religion, or if not organised religion/prayer groups, then some New Age-type fixation involving diet and ‘the spirit’.

While not denying that weirdness and twisted minds do exist, have you ever considered that you might be weird and twisted on certain topics, more specifically about religion? I am not alleging that you are but merely asking you to consider the possibility.

I think you hadn’t a clue who David Starkey is, assumed he was a scientist, and when told he wasn’t, Googled ‘scientists Starkey’ and came up with this ordinary academic.

‘It’s getting boring’ – what people always say when they are out of their depth.