I have wanted to write about my experiences of reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006) and the discussions with friends which followed. Dawkins hopes that people who perhaps haven't thought seriously about religion or the existence of God, those who are "sitting on the fence" on the subject, may be encouraged to do so after reading his book. What surprised me most during discussions between my friends and I on the subject was the fact that it seemed impossible to have a dispassionate yet serious conversation about religion with anyone, regardless of their religiosity or lack thereof.

One of the main criticisms I have encountered concerning The God Delusion is a dislike for the manner of Dawkins' angry, rant-like rhetoric and it is true that he pulls no punches when addressing the subject of organised religion, provocatively describing the "indoctrination" of children as akin to "child abuse". This highlights the unspoken societal rule that a persons religious beliefs are to be afforded a level of respect far above that given to their political beliefs or their particular tastes in art or music for instance. Religious beliefs are almost above criticism. I can berate someone for their electoral voting inclinations without fear of serious reprisal so long as I remain civil and as polite as the situation demands. I can say that someone's admiration for the music of Billy Ray Cyrus shows shockingly poor taste and that every minute they have spent listening to it was a waste of their time here on earth. However, I cannot say to a person of faith that I think their belief in God is also a waste of their time and that their holy books are fictions based on myth, at least not to their face, without fearing that I will have crossed some kind of line in the sand, no matter how polite I am about it.

If I call any particular organised religion "ridiculous" and go on to qualify that by saying that I believe the deity or deities involved to be a figment of the human imagination, adherents to that religion have a right to be offended if they so wish, as long as their reaction remains a legal and reasonable one, but the notion that I would also have managed to offend and slander some kind of omnipotent super being through my pronouncements is a little more unsettling. Just what sort of all powerful creator would be the least bothered by what I had to say and then also require the intervention of human followers to teach me a lesson I'd never forget?

It is this notion of untouchable deference towards religious beliefs which has been the main source of debate surrounding The God Delusion and it is the area which generates the most heated discussions among those I have spoken with on the topics covered within the book. It is a shame that this aspect takes up so much attention because there is so much more within the pages to stimulate the mind. For many people the intricate complexity of the natural world cannot be something which has arisen through mere chance and the only coherent answer to the existence of intelligent life which can be imagined is the co-existence of a creator. What Dawkins does both in this book, and more so in his previous works on evolutionary biology (especially The Blind Watchmaker, 1986), is present the case for life arising through innumerable small steps over an almost unfathomable period of time, Darwinian evolution, and he does so with admirable clarity for the non-scientist or layman.

Human beings struggle with the thought of their own deaths and spend a lot of time worrying over what may or may not happen afterwards. Believers in a deity may find solace thinking that they will be saved and ascend to heaven. Even if it is the other, hotter, place they end up there is still something after death. A typical atheistic thesis may be that after death your body is either buried and then slowly consumed by soil-dwelling creatures or otherwise disposed of, by burning for instance, and that your conciousness flickers out of existence when brain function ceases. Far from turning all atheists into doom-laden depressives it should really encourage them to make the most of their lives here on earth. Why be scared and worried about death when you're not going to be around to see it? Whatever the (unknowable) truth about what happens after your own death it does seem utterly pointless to spend a great deal of time agitating about it beforehand.

Dawkins' The God Delusion may have some notable flaws in its execution and may veer towards table thumping self-indulgence in sections but it certainly cannot be accused of a lack of passion and it is provocative in a way that is guaranteed to promote debate, whether among your friends and peers or within the confines of your own head and that is probably the author's main aim in the first place.

Released in 2003 and produced for a budget of something like £400,000, 16 Years of Alcohol is the directorial feature film début of ex-Skids frontman, ex-male model and ex-TV presenter Richard Jobson. I've seen this film twice in as many years now and I'll have a stab at reviewing it ...

Jobson has adapted the film from his own semi-autobiographical book of the same name. I cannot pass comment on the book as I have never read it, nor have I seen it for sale anywhere, but it was described as a "prose poem" on the BBC website. This description comes as no surprise to me as I do get the impression that Jobson may have a tendency towards the ostentatiously artistic. Nonetheless, despite having some notable flaws, 16 years of Alcohol is still rather a good film.

Opening with Frankie Mac (Kevin McKidd) receiving what is known in Scotland as a "real doin'" by three other men in a deserted Edinburgh close we are then shown the events leading up to this incident in intercut flashbacks. It is not clear to the viewer whether Frankie dies as a result of this violent and bloody beating and you are left to wonder if the film might not be a dream sequence review of his life seen through the eyes of a dying man.

With a title like 16 Years of Alcohol you would be forgiven for expecting this to be a film about alcoholism. This is true only in passing and the film is more concerned with despair and a paucity of hope which, fuelled by alcohol, results in self-expression and temporary liberation through violence. The seeds of Frankie's hopelessness are made clear in the sections of the film dedicated to his experiences as a young boy in awe of his charismatic father and the chivalry and love his father shows for Frankie's mother. After witnessing a sexual indiscretion between his father and another woman Frankie begins to see through to the grim reality of their lives. His father is an alcoholic and a womaniser and there is a simmering resentment between his parents. In a particularly memorable and heavily stylised scene the 10 year old Frankie sits between his cobweb-strewn parents who sit in their armchairs facing each other with hostile unblinking glares while each gripping a glass of spirits. With a nod to the way the human mind distorts, idealises or amplifies memories through time, the scenes focused on Frankie's early life seem particularly impressionistic.

The section exploring Frankie's life as the leader of a teenage skinhead gang is filmed as an obvious homage to Kubrick's 1971 A Clockwork Orange. Stuart Sinclair Blyth gives a solid performance as Miller, one of the more psychopathic members of the gang. Frankie sees hope of an escape from his tortured life in the shape of art student Helen (Laura Fraser) but their relationship is doomed to failure and Frankie descends into alcoholic oblivion after she leaves him. [McKidd and Fraser also appeared in Gillies MacKinnon's 1996 Small Faces from which Jobson seems to have drawn influence while shooting this film.]

Years later we see Frankie at an AA meeting where he confides to the circle "my name is Frankie and I am a violent man". A second relationship with aspiring actress and fellow AA member Mary (a well cast Susan Lynch) seems to offer Frankie a second chance but, in a clumsy and unconvincing sequence, Frankie mistakenly thinks she has been unfaithful to him in what amounts to an echo of his own father's indiscretions round the back of a pub.

The narration by McKidd throughout the film does on occasion veer quite close to being pretentious nonsense but that aside the actor puts in a good shift and delivers a powerful and memorable performance. As good a performance as I've seen from McKidd.

Whereas some directors would have chosen to make a film with this subject matter in the "kitchen sink" tradition of social realism I think many people will have seen a film just like that before. Jobson and his cinematographer John Rhodes employ striking visual flourishes throughout this film, including still photography, unusual framing and hyper-real colour saturation, which, along with some excellent performances, elevate a fairly standard plot to something much more worthwhile. Viewers of a certain age will also be given a nostalgic aural treat with a soundtrack featuring Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, The Skids (obviously) and Roxy Music.

The title credits dedicate the film to Jobson's late elder brother Francis and subsequent interviews have made it clear that the Frankie in the film is an amalgam of the two brothers. Richard was a teenage gang member in Dunfermline's Abbeyview estate seeking acceptance as part of a larger group. The "AV Toi" gang had tailored clothes and a passion for football-related and drink-fuelled violence. His older brother Francis was also a skinhead but his intellectualism and more solitary nature drove him away from that life and he became a Hare Krishna devotee.

In short then, a visual and aural treat, a tad on the artsy-fartsy side with the narration but generally good acting across the board. You could do a lot worse than give it a go.

A lonely, pathologically shy and socially paralysed 27 year old man orders a life-sized, anatomically correct sex doll from the internet and forms a relationship with her. Does that sound like a story you'd like to spend an evening exploring? If not, you may find that your initial scepticism fades as this well crafted and intelligent film progresses.

Written by regular Six Feet Under contributor Nancy Oliver and directed by Craig Gillespie (Mr. Woodcock), Lars and the Real Girl never veers into the vulgarity or lewdness that such a storyline might lead toward and turns out to be really quite warm-hearted and touching. Ryan Gosling, rightly praised for his show stopping turn as a crack addled teacher in Half Nelson, gives a thoughtful and understated performance as Lars. As the film progresses we learn more about the life that Lars has led and begin to understand why he is so desperately introverted and awkward. The appearance in his workplace of Margo, played with charm and sensitivity by Kelli Garner, seems to elicit unfamiliar feelings within Lars and helps prompt the purchase of "Bianca".

Sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer) has been becoming increasingly concerned for Lars's mental state and his almost total withdrawal from others. She is delighted that things may be changing for the better when Lars explains that he has a friend visiting him and wants to introduce her to his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and Karin. They are then in very unfamiliar territory when "Bianca" is brought to their house for dinner as Lars's new girlfriend. Paul Schneider plays Lars's older brother with considerable skill, giving his best performance to date. Mortimer too is convincing and involving.

The way the God fearing folk of this unnamed mid-western town become more and more involved in Lars's delusion surrounding "Bianca", leading her to eventually be elected to the board of school governors, could easily be sneered at by the more cynical viewer and the story does flirt with fantastical sentimentality at times. However, does that "flaw" make It's a Wonderful Life a bad film? To my mind, it does not. Like Capra's 1946 classic, the film is only superficially realistic. It's a morality fable and if you can fully accept this, use your imagination and just enjoy the performances you will be rewarded.

There are many great moments in this film. The sequence with Lars dancing on his own at the party to which he has brought Bianca and the empathetic moment shared between Lars and Margo when he performs CPR on her recently executed teddy bear being just two. Well worth 105 minutes of your time.

I remember getting my hands on Underworld's seminal dubnobasswithmyheadman (1993) and being gob smacked at how good it was. It's not often that an album will stop you in your tracks and alter the way you listen to almost everything else. The hypnotic bass lines and beats, the riotous textures and the crazed pseudo-poignance of Karl Hyde's lyrics made it one of the best, if not the best electronic “dance” albums ever made. Nearly 15 years (!!!) later it still sounds fresh and wonderful. Although 1996's Second Toughest in the Infants was a great follow up record I felt Underworld never reached the heights they did on their first proper electronic album back in 1993.

This most recent release follows some years of experimentation from the band after the departure of Darren Emerson in 2001 and the release of 2002's 100 Days Off. That album wasn't very dissimilar to the output during the time Emerson was with the band and although it received generally positive reviews it didn't make a huge impression on me. The years of experimentation after 100 Days Off led to the production of three collections of new songs under the banner of The RiverRun Project. These EPs, Lovely Broken Thing, Pizza For Eggs and I'm a Big Sister, and I'm a Girl, and I'm a Princess, and This Is My Horse were released online at Underworld Live and showed Underworld were taking a more introspective tangent. Add to this the 2006 film score for the late Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, give things a quick buzz in the blender and out pops Oblivion With Bells.

The opening track Crocodile might not immediately gel with this notion of mellowing introspection and, granted, it's a 4/4 trance grind of a track with a big chorus which wouldn't feel out of place on 100 Days Off or Beaucoup Fish. Beautiful Burnout seems to take us back further in time and sits closer to the epic multiple movement tracks on Second Toughest in the Infants and I defy you to be able to sit still during the final 3 minutes of the track. By the time Karl Hyde is delivering his off beat stream-of-conciousness lyrics on Holding The Moth you're right back to dubnobasswithmyheadman and convinced that this is actually a far better record than you had hoped for.

Highlight after highlight follows and after around 10 full listens over the last few weeks I'm happy to conclude that this is Underworld's finest work in 10-plus years. The closing track, Best Mangu Ever, recalls the blissful head nodding close of dubnobasswithmyheadman's River of Bass and M.E. Rick Smith and Karl Hyde have revitalised their music in recent years and Oblivion With Bells gets a healthy thumbs-up here.

I've launched the gallery section of this website. It's using the Gallery2 software and I've embedded it into the Joomla CMS system powering the website as a whole.

To start things off I've finally published the pictures I took while touring France and Belgium by bike. It's only taken me 5 and a half years to get these up online but I've been busy. I took these pictures with a Canon G2 digital camera, which I thought was great at the time. More pictures, and certainly more recent pictures, will appear soon.

Last Saturday I hired a car and travelled north with the plan of going for a nice walk in Assynt during Sunday's weather window. The original plan was to walk up to the summit of Canisp and then go across to Suilven. However, while driving up the A9 the thought struck me that, since I seem to be exorcising the ghosts of past failures on the hills this year, I should stop south of Ullapool and tackle An Teallach (The Forge).

I've tried to climb this mountain 3 times in the past and been thwarted by the weather every time. With an almost guaranteed rain-free, low-wind day in prospect I couldn't just drive past could I? An Teallach is regarded as one of the very best mountains Scotland has to offer. Lots of airy scrambling, sheer drops and imposing buttresses along with fine ocean views on clear days.

Standing on the banks of Little Loch Broom on Saturday night around 11:30pm I looked up and was awestruck at the sheer number of stars in the clear sky. City folk never see this spectacle due to the ever present sodium haze from street lighting.

At 7:45am the next morning I was on my way up the path from the Corrie Hallie south into Fisherfield in broken sunshine. By 9am I was standing at the foot of Sail Liath (The Grey Heel) which lies to the south east of An Teallach proper. It's a steep ascent on frost-shattered torridonian sandstone to reach the crest of Sail Liath but upon reaching this level the views open up dramatically. The hills of Assynt to the north, Ben More Coigach, Cul Mor, Suilven and Canisp seem much closer than a glance at a road map would suggest. You can easily pick out Foinaven, Ben More Assynt, Ben Hope, Ben Wyvis and the peaks of The Fannichs. The views over the Fisherfield Forest and the west coast are fantastic.

The first picture here was taken from the summit of Sail Liath looking north and shows the famous pinnacles of An Teallach (the Corrag Bhuidhe) including Lord Berkeley's Seat and the first of the two munros, Sgurr Fiona. It's at this point that you realise you are on a serious mountain. I knew the pinnacles would be dramatic and a difficult climb but these are way beyond my abilities as a solo scrambler. At the start of the Corrag Bhuidhe, having just watched the two climbers in front of me rope up and don their climbing helmets, I took the fairly eroded and still very airy path which traverses this section of the hill on the south west. Any illusions that this would be an easy option were very quickly put aside. The path is rather faint and is on very steep ground. The hill drops away below you for many hundreds of metres. To make matters worse some snow still clung to the hillside and covered the path on some sections for up to five metres at a time. With nothing to cling onto on these sections the feeling is ever present that any slip would result in a very serious situation indeed.

While gingerly coming round a buttress on the traverse I took hold of what I suspected to be firm rock and was very surprised when a 3 foot section of the mountain came away in my hand. The huge boulder slid off the shoulder high shelf and crashed, point first, into the path and missed my standing foot by about an inch. It then rolled impressively down the mountainside giving a good idea of how a human body might act should one fall from this precarious perch. Had that block struck me on the foot it would certainly have shattered bone and left me in a dreadful position. Not long after this, due to the copious amount of adrenaline now flowing around my body, cramp of a very debilitating kind set into my legs. Neither leg would bend without cramping up painfully and I had to sit down and rest for ten minutes before continuing. This happened again and again on the way round and made for slow progress.

I was certainly relieved when the traverse came to an end and I could rest for a while before tackling the steep climb up to Sgurr Fiona (1060m). If you were of a mind to do so you could reverse the ridge here to take in Lord Berkeley's Seat, the last of the pinnacles, but I'd had more than enough of this section of the hill. 45 minutes later I'd made the descent and the re-ascent required to reach the second munro, Bidean a'Glas Thuill (1062m) - see OS map. The final two photos accompanying this post were shot from the summit cairn here. The first looks back towards Sgurr Fiona while the second looks over Glas Mheall Liath towards Ben Wyvis.

It's a long walk back to the Corrie Hallie from here over Glas Mheall Mor on rock slabs, peat bog and grass. I had a long time to reflect on the events of the day and I realised that in ten years of visiting the Scottish hills this was the first time I'd been only a whisker away from being in real trouble. There are some impressive waterfalls on the river flowing off the mountain on the way back to Dundonnell and I was sorely tempted to plunge in. If I'd been a little less worn out by my adventure on the hill I'd have done so.

If my previous post on Ben Ledi spoke of that hill being an ideal candidate for those who may be new to walking in the hills, An Teallach presents the walker with a completely different prospect. It is a fearsome torridonian sandstone monster of a hill which has teeth and a complete south to north traverse of the mountain should not be undertaken lightly. I would imagine that in winter conditions or during poor weather this hill would be a no go area for all but the most experienced of climbers.

Another monkey off my back in terms of past failures rectified and I do feel a sense of achievement having succeeded on such a serious hill.