Easier said than done, barriejohn. It's not like ending your subscription to Reader's Digest. If all your family and friends are traditional muslims, and the sharia punishment for leaving your religion is death, there's going to need to be a few more generations of muslim moderates before leaving Islam becomes as easy as leaving Christianity.

Whether there's been dishonesty or power games involved in the reversal of this decision, at least it's a sign of progress that the decision was indeed reversed. I agree with Stuart that we ought to encourage the moderates and not just assume they're all hardline homophobes. Islam is a bigoted religion but there are muslims trying to distance themselves and their personal beliefs from the worst aspects of the creed.

If God separated the earth from the sky, where's the gap? Can't see one, myself.

In contrast to the terms on offer here, I would probably describe myself as an "atheist realist", meaning that I reject belief in God as anything other than a product of the human imagination. When one accepts all gods and spirits as human cultural constructs, one has a basis for forming realistic models of the nature of religion and the roles it plays in the imaginitive human-centred cosmologies that different cultures have constructed for themselves. As for the cosmological "truth claims" of these religions, I would favour the logical positivist view that such claims are too devoid of real information to be empirically meaningful.

"He was attempting. He failed because he wasn't talking to an underage girl, but he was definitely attempting. "

No, there was NO underage girl. We atheists are supposed to be able to clearly disinguish between fantasy and reality. You can't "attempt to groom an underage girl" if it's really a policeman - you can only "attempt to groom a policeman posing as an underage girl". This is not an academic distinction. If his crime is being presented as an "attempt to groom an underage girl", then it's a fictitious crime. We shouldn't be charging people with fictitious crimes.

This doesn't mean he shouldn't be charged, but the charge should refer to what really happened and why he's really considered worth arresting. He's coming before the courts because the police regard him as potentially dangerous, and this is something the court needs to assess, without basing this assessment on the mistaken idea that the police are providing evidence that he has actually engaged in child abuse.

It's a more complex issue than that, remigius. Having police online, pretending to be children, actively portraying themselves as sexually available and "begging for sex" from strange old men, can only reinforce the idea amongst these deluded types that there are indeed plenty of kids out there "begging for it". It could also encourage such behaviour amongst impressionable youngsters.

And since this man is being charged with a thought crime, not an actual crime against a child, we really should be honest about that. While I believe it's preferable for people to be charged with real crimes, rather than pretend crimes made up by the police, there may well be a strong argument for "thought crime" convictions in the name of public safety. But let's not pretend he was actually "grooming an underage girl" - this misrepresents both the nature of the offence and the police tactics involved, in a needlessly evasive way.

I'm uneasy about these kind of entrapment tactics. Apart from anything else, the charges make no sense. How can he be charged with "attempting to groom an underage girl" if there was no underage girl?

"Attempting to groom an imaginary underage girl" is more empirically accurate, and since he posted sexually suggestive material concerning this imaginary girl, he presumably ought to be charged with creating and distributing child porn. But since the police joined in, and indeed, instigated the whole thing, they ought to be charged, too.

"He’s let down the Catholic community." "I am very disappointed"

Hmm. Before he left, he should have given them a final sign, universally understood, involving the middle finger of each hand.

I agree with Ian Edmond and David McKeegan. Unless the dog fighters themselves regard this activity as sanctioned or encouraged by their religion, or having some sort of religious significance, then for critics to associate it with Islam is pretty meaningless, and offensive to muslims who disapprove of cruelty to animals.

The difference between euthanasia and "ordinary" suicide is that euthanasia deaths are assisted by others who believe they're acting in the interests of the person wanting to die. There'll probably always be examples of rational and understandable suicide that don't officially qualify for assistance, no matter what the legal situation may be.