My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.

One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives.

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.