“That … the prisoner had repeatedly maintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra’s fables, in profane allusion to Esop’s Fables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Mahomet to Christ: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ”.

This young man was killed by the church in an Edinburgh a few decades away from earning its reputation as a centre of European Enlightenment and Athens of the North.

Twenty years ago some local authorities refused to show Monty Python’s life of Brian under pressure from local religious lobbyists.

Gerry Springer The Opera cannot be performed in public, whatever the law says, because of the power and determination of religious fundamentalists.

Even today the blasphemy laws are still on the statute book, and we have the growth in “faith schools” and the suspicion, at least, that they are intent on expanding the teaching of religion into the science class, in the shape of so-called “Intelligent Design Theory”.

Teddys call Mohammed are one thing, but this type of thinking, while it may be diminished and in the background in our society, is not yet defeated. It is not inconceivable that we could slip back that way ourselves.