LONDON - Some of Britain's most eminent writers and thinkers are demanding equal time for atheism on a daily religious radio spot that is a cherished ritual for believers of all faiths.
"Thought for the Day," the British Broadcasting Corp.'s venerable "God slot," responded Wednesday by giving listeners a dose of godlessness in a barbed debate on the place of religion on the national broadcaster.
Richard Dawkins, Oxford University's professor for the public understanding of science, summoned the nation to abandon religion — "leave the crybaby phase and finally come of age."
Dawkins was granted an experimental "Thought for the Day" slot an hour after Anne Atkins, a newspaper columnist and wife of a Church of England vicar, had presented the daily fixture.
The issue touched a British nerve. "Thought for Today" may be just two minutes, 45 seconds long, but since 1970 it has been a fixture in one of the nation's most influential news programs — the "Today" program on Radio 4, which draws 6.45 million listeners.
The unprecedented atheist "Thought" came a day after more than a hundred prominent atheists — including playwrights Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker, authors Iain Banks and John Fowles, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Joseph Rotblat — published a letter demanding equal treatment.
"Thought for the Day" has regular contributions from Sikhs, Jews, Catholics as well as the established Church of England, but does not welcome contributors who hold no religious belief.
"By resolutely retaining the ban, the BBC is discriminating against the nonreligious, and thus giving the impression of promoting religion as the one source of ethics," said the letter.
The debate over a program intended to start the day with thoughtful contemplation quickly turned angry.
"To ask an atheist to contribute to ('Thought for Today') would be like asking an earthworm to comment on quantum physics," Gerald Aves commented in his e-mail to the "Today" program Web site.
Phil Healey responded: "This is an absolutely perfect example of the bigotry of those people who believe in fairy-tales."
Church attendance has declined sharply in Britain, but a BBC poll two years ago found that 62 percent affirmed their belief in God and in Jesus Christ.
On Wednesday's official "Thought for the Day," Atkins tackled the age-old question of "where is God?" in relation to the disappearance of two 10-year-old girls, now feared to have been abducted and perhaps killed.
"Sometimes there aren't any answers, or the answers we get are worthless, or no answers," she said.
She cited the Gospel account of Jesus praying at Gethsemane: "He prayed, and he wept, and he put his life in the hands of God. And in the fear and the agony, God was there."
Dawkins attacked the notion of a creator as "infantile."
"We have been born and we are going to die," he added, "but before we die we have time to understand why we were born, time to understand the universe into which we were born and with that understanding we finally grow up and realize that there is no help for us outside our own efforts," he said.
"Humanity can now leave the crybaby phase and finally come of age."
In an editorial, The Daily Telegraph said atheists had no reason to complain. "With very few exceptions, what you get from rabbi, priest and mullah alike is Religion Lite: doctrine so watered down as to be inoffensive to all — or, rather, offensive only in its patronizing banality," the newspaper said.
In a short debate on BBC radio, jazz singer George Melly, who represented the atheist point of view, was asked whether there was nothing offensive about "Thought for the Day."
"Well, except its existence, really," Melly drawled.