I am a compulsive writer of 'letters to the editor'. So unprincipled am I in my choice of editors that I have even had published an avowedly atheist letter in The Plain Truth. This particular publication, for the information of those readers who are less than catholic in their reading habits or who are somewhat prissy liberal believers (and many of my best friends are one or the other) is a well produced glossy freemag devoted to the task of asserting that the Bible is the sole and sufficient source of all the wisdom we need (by courtesy of the Great Inspirer in the Sky).

Within the confines of this unpromising dogma, The Plain Truth often argues its case well and, because there is more than one way of killing a cat, can sometimes arrive at startlingly reasonable conclusions on specific questions.

Two consequences have accrued from my published letter; one is that I have been invited to embark on an ideological correspondence with a weird and wonderful lady in Yorkshire who evidently thinks that she and I are destined to meet in the Great Sorting Office in the Hereafter. The other is a cryptic little note from the Secretary of the (British) National Secular Society - no doubt in his personal capacity as a valued friend - enquiring how much I will pay for his silence about my appearing in the enemy's letters page. I undertake to pay the NSS a donation, in addition to my usual membership dues, equal to one third of the fee I shall receive for a forthcoming article of mine on One Humanist's View of the Kirk which will appear in Life and Work (the official organ of the Church of Scotland - this, I have since done, ES).

But that is all by the way. The serious point I wish to assert is that fanaticism, of any kind, is Ideological Public Enemy Number One - for those of us who live in relatively peaceful plural societies. It is Blood and Guts Enemy Number One in those unhappy lands where pluralism simply means a plurality of threats to one's dignity, to one's very survival.

To counter religious fanaticism is the principal task of secularists; we must rid ourselves of the illusion, that we harboured in less brutal times, the illusion that the battle has been won. it has not; it is not that sort of battle. We have to ask ourselves - what are the obstacles in the path of resurgent fanaticism? There are three, in my opinion.

One of course is our organised secular selves. Another is good old apathy, a well practised habit of not being carried away by high-powered enthusiasms of any kind. Love may make the world go round but it is apathy that stops it going off at every tangent. The other one is liberal religion.

It is obviously easy to dismiss liberal believers as decent windbags whose characters are as impeccable as their intellects are dishonest, as people who are kind to bairns and wee furry beasties - and very little else. But something has to be said before we dismiss liberal believers: - that when we, strictly as humanists, take up practical issues (the promotion of this, the reform of that and the abolition of the other) it is often liberal believers who are our allies on the matters in question. That strictly practical consideration should not be overlooked, as it so often is, by armchair atheists, hidebound humanists and senile secularists. What is also important is to see exactly how liberal religion obstructs the advance of its fanatical cousin. It is customary in religious discourse to expound ideas by symbol, by metaphor, by any bloody thing except direct sayso. Let me play this game too.

Imagine a city whose main manufactured product is damp cotton wool and imagine that a column of well-armed desperadoes, in armoured personnel carriers, is advancing to take the city. What can the citizens do? Easy! They can erect a perimeter wall of damp cotton wool fifty feet high and fifty yards thick all around their city. The enemy would be held up more or less indefinitely and, even if they tried to breach the defence by firing it, the smoke would likely suffocate them.

The city is liberal religion; the attackers are the fanatics. Would six humanists and a dog be a better means of stopping them?

Another favourite of mine is to see the Kirk as, among other things, as a sort of ideological fly-paper. Fundamentalists buzzing around wondering where to deposit, whatever it is in their nature to deposit, get stuck and so do less harm than they would otherwise do.

We may prefer not to, we may be squeamish about it, but we have to regard liberal religion as a positive feature in a very negative world. Besides which, it is always interesting to hear what consenting liberals say in private.