But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith.

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.

The best care on earth cannot prevent us all dying in the end.

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

Nothing keeps people together like the exalted conviction that they alone are to be spared that eternal anguish of hell fire to which everyone else will be condemned.

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.