I was baptised two weeks into my life then confirmed a Roman Catholic at fourteen. I don't proselytise. I turn down most invitations outside of mass to church events and only bother God when I need to, or I think it's time. I would never vote under pressure from my so-called religious leaders. I am a secularist but would never join a secularist society. I've been called a Papist, a bead-rattler and I've had "Every sperm is sacred" (a tune from Monty Python's Meaning of Life) sung to me on a few occasions by those trying to wind me up - but I'm no victim and always maintained my sense of humour as others attempted to manifest theirs.

In spite of this article, I consider my faith a private matter - far more private than say my allegiance to a football club, political party or cricketing county. What I am relative to my religion is my own business and it doesn't get in the way of how I go about my daily work or what I wear and nor does it make any difference to the way my colleagues go about their daily work in relation to me here in Britain. I'm comfortable with what I am and what I believe in - I don't need to wear a funny hat, or sport a label explaining why I am a religious man.

I don't live my life completely according to my faith - yes, I've bought condoms, yes, I had sex before I was married and yes, I'm human. I suppose I'm socially cohesive too (racism and religious hatred are for numbskulls, not for me) with my kaleidoscope of friends of most religions, races and backgrounds (not that I ever went out looking for a rainbow coalition of bosom buddies). It's simply that in public I don't do religion.

Still, I, like many, am just about fed up to the back teeth with those who go round either aggressively publicly demonstrating their religion or trying to thrust it down others' throats. Fed up with the air of superiority the extremer versions of these religion-addicts seem to have - even though they are clearly often borne of barbaric ideologies (like the wealthy Saudi Wahhabis) or desperate, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts clinging for branches (like so many Western converts to Islam and many of the so-called happy-clappy brand of in-your-face evangelical Christians).

Proselytising is drilled into these men and women's heads as if each victim is a wrung on the ladder to heaven - little do they realise that they are a public nuisance and socially divisive. Whether Christian, Muslim or of another so-called faith, the proselytisers are taking an ideal of a unified world with one belief and trying to squash it down onto the real world which is multi-faith, multi-faceted and so amorphous that any unifying ideal will have to come directly, not indirectly, from God. The world will always be full of unbelievers - proselytisers can't seem to grasp this simple fact.

I am simultaneously mystified and dismayed as to why some people have to go around like fashion car-crashes advertising their religion to others 24/7.  Those women (?) on the streets of Ward End or Stepney walking around in head to toe black cloth looking like human post-boxes (or Ninjas as one of my Muslim colleagues calls them). What is that all about? I thought they too are supposed to be from a proselytising religion? Britain's streets aren't that dusty. They really ought to sit down with an advertising agency if they are intent on proselytising - they look dark, ridiculous and menacing and need to spend a long while with Trish & Susannah or Gok before they get close to drawing in adherents.

As for their husbands - in the 1980's the Smurfs had a cult following but they are no longer popular at all. Fashion consciousness is important if you are after world domination - look at the Nazis - and those proselytes with an end game like the extreme Islamist Wahhabis really ought to take note. Black is out. So are lice-magnet beards, which shouldn't be allowed at public swimming baths unless shaved to a reasonable length. And why young gangs want to go around beating people up and getting involved in crime in the name of religion is anyone's guess - I always thought gang-members were supposed to be cool or at least hard; not a bunch of religious pussies spiritually in touch with their Maker.

None of the other religions are going to get close to me. After a great deal of study, I don't submit to Islam - not a word of it (that's my right by the way and no-one will ever take that away from me). I don't believe in what my Baha'i or Buddhist friends believe in and - as for becoming a Hindu - sorry, but my faith rarely stretches to transubstantiation let alone believing in a variety of idols. No other religion gets anywhere near me either. People are free, privately, to believe in the god of cowpat as long as they don't start trying to shove cowpat down other people's throats. Religious texts are only religious for those who have faith in them - I don't seek forgiveness from anyone if I use a copy of any one of them to murder an annoying mosquito or stabilise a leg of a table.

I don't bother attending inter-religious debates - what's the point of that? There aren't any people on the planet today with a proven bush-telegraph to God (except allegedly David Icke) so why should I listen to them spouting (more often than not to boost their egos or fill their own pockets)? I'd honestly prefer to have the mother-in-law round for tea or Flymo my chest hair.

It's that absolutist, all-knowing "superiority" thing that really gets to me - indicative of those who have proselytising faith. These victims (for that is what they are) brainwashed into thinking that "we are going to heaven and you're not" however they treat you or think of you. They are not programmed to leave you alone and wish you the best out of respect for your right to exist as an individual. One such unfortunate approached me in Illinois a few years back and cornered me when I was leaving an apartment block.

"I have not seen you at the church" he said politely (referring to the massive evangelical Christian church, shopping centre and business complex located nearby). I cordially replied that I didn't share his beliefs and that his invitation was very welcome but that I would continue to attend the Catholic cathedral. "Then you are going to hell," this man announced.

Normally I'd just walk away from such people, probably have a private chuckle and muse for a while about the unused fathoms of the human brain but this man really annoyed me, so I cornered him back.

"If there are people like you in heaven then that's a place to cross off the desirable destination list - I'd prefer to go to hell" was my angry riposte. He had no riposte to my riposte and he walked on his way, possibly having a private chuckle of his own before praying for my lost soul.

Since then I've heard the "you're going to hell" theme reproduced widely by a bunch of people I'd prefer to be a universe away from if I had the choice. In the rants of Abu Izzadeen, Abu Hamza, Abu Faisal, Anjem Choudary and Ayman Zawahiri, I've heard the same claim. I've heard it from extremists belonging to sects like Hizb ut Tahrir, like Tablighi Jamaat, like the Plymouth Brethren and the allegedly catholic Society of St Pius X. Am I alone in thinking that I'd prefer not to share a train carriage with these people let alone the Garden of Eden?

Can you imagine the Garden of Eden housing that kind of rabble? There would be disputes about the height of grass, numbers of petals allowed on flowers, arguments about whether ankle-displaying is feasible and apples would no doubt hang untouched on trees for fear of the thought cherubs these gangsters would engage to police them. The place would first turn into an East Grinstead, then a kind of Neasden then a Leytonesque ghetto before emerging as a full-blown sewage dump from which - under these sects' terms - there is no getaway. Eternal life in their Eden? No thanks. Now you see why burning in hellfire seems so attractive by comparison?

I totally appreciate that most people find Roman Catholicism totally unbelievable. I shake their hand as they are equal human beings - all equal under English law and the laws of other similarly civilised lands - and (unlike some Roman Catholics) say nothing to push their religious beliefs on me in any which way.

Why would I want to proselytise?  In a world where there is much access to religious material - notably interactive material online - why shouldn't proselytising be outlawed altogether and people be left to just make up their own minds? Just as with Life Insurance salesmen - after all, we know why life insurance is important, we can read ads and search comparison sites if we really want to buy life insurance. Even life insurance salesmen are banned from knocking on your door without reason - the proselytisers should join their banned list. The proselytisers make double-glazing salespeople seem attractive - at least you can put the phone down on them.

In my eyes, "spreading the good word" these days is not standing with a great crucifix in the High Street, it's being an example to others, trying to be a decent fellow and making one's society a more cohesive and better place for today's and future generations. Proselytisers seem to think that those people who are dissimilar to them are like people with no friends, who must belong or they are left out - little do they realise that the dissimilar see them as the unusual ones and them as the friendless drones who need the crutch of public religion to make themselves feel as if they have value.

Alas, the world is not as intelligent as it should be. History deems that even first world countries like Britain have people like the Archbishop of Canterbury hanging around to make foolish comments on a monthly basis - recently blowing wind in the sails of the slave ship of Sharia and giving UK Islamists a reason to hang around when they should really be fast sailing away from British waters before they again take a step too far and get given an Armada broadside.

Alas, what is Caesar's and what is God's is too often confused and religion gets to play a part in too many areas of life which should remain demarcated from religious interference - Britain is nothing compared to the religious interference experienced in countries like Pakistan, Poland, Iran and Nigeria (not to mention the Vatican!). Priests in Poland are more powerful than policemen, mullahs in Iran more powerful than Generals, whilst politicians in Nigeria and Pakistan really have to think harder than any politicians anywhere else before they say anything for fear of starting mass riots involving religious, tribal hotheads.

Then there are the atheists. Atheism is a religion in its own right. The Dawkins of this world are good, cheap entertainment (pulling TV audiences higher than Stash in the Attic) but to actually believe that there is no God is harder to believe than that there is one. They're keen to push all religious folk into a leper colony as they bash religious beliefs one by one - but they fail to notice that their own flaky limbs are dangling off just as tenuously. Deists or Atheists - we're all part of the human race and that's all we need to express...publicly.

It will be a great day indeed when religion is privatised - kept to the churches, remote satellite channels, mosques, temples and behind closed doors. When human beings can walk the streets of any location on the planet without having to bow down to the interpretations of bigots who claim to be bush-telegraphs to God and claim their religious texts allow them to tell others how to behave. Upholding decency - through legal code and social empathy - can be encouraged while leaving the religious megaphone and any associated medieval dress locked well away at home.

When someone next tries to sell you Heaven, picture the place with them in it, sprawled across a lush lawn in a white toga with angels hovering nearby. Is that the kind of person you want to spend eternity with? Could you bear bathing in heaven's streams and exchanging idle chatter with them or will it threaten your idea of celestial bliss?

When the knock comes on your door - unless it's Jessica Alba - offer the proselytiser a booklet available at most citizen's advice bureaux called "Voluntary Work in Your Area" and tell them to spend their time helping this world now - rather than their own place in what (if they are the seers) seems like a desperately undesirable next.

Dominic Whiteman is the Editor of the Westminster Journal. He runs the investigative agency V7 Europe.

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