I have a friend - friend? Well, an acquaintance, who until recently I thought was a friend, who, when I try to discuss religion with her calls me a born again atheist, a bully, and bonkers, and tells me to leave her alone; it's a kind of hate talk, albeit mild.

I never employ an ad hominem approach in discourse, but she just flies off the handle when ever I try to discuss "faith".

She doesn't think Tim Minchin is funny, just very angry, she found "From Abbotabad to Worse" infuriating, and at present I'm waiting to hear from her as to whether she'll agree to let me send her Daniel Dennett's recent video "How to Tell You're an Atheist". ; this will be my last shot, although I don't really know why I'm bothering.

She suffers from having been born into the Catholic tradition, and it's proved absolutely impossible to get her to discuss the matter. About everything else she's perfectly rational, and I like her, but her behaviour when it comes to religion is a text book example of what I've observed over many decades, cognitive dissonance, in spades; actually, it may be more similar to schizophrenia; I'm using both terms very loosely of course.

Questioning and enquiry of her beliefs are absolutely forbidden, but she feels completely at liberty to slag off those with different views to her.

An interesting syndrome perhaps?