The National Secular Society wants to stop the NHS funding chaplaincy services. The society claims that £32 million is spent every year by hospital trusts and that the money would be better directed elsewhere.

Superficially, it might appear like an attractive argument. Why fund chaplaincy services when we could employ more doctors and nurses instead? Religion is after all, as Evan Davies suggested on Wednesday's Today programme, only a minority interest.

The vision of the world offered by the National Secular Society is rather like that offered by Charles Dickens in his novel, Hard Times. In it two alternative visions of "human flourishing" are presented. The utilitarian model of "scientific political economy" is championed by Thomas Gradgrind, a hardware manufacturer, founder of a model school and later MP for Coketown.

The other vision is embodied by the people of Coketown who are prone to a "strange and unsavoury exuberance of imagination", and prefer reading novels to government statistics. "In this life," Gradgrind insists, "we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but facts." So, what are the facts?

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