I do hope that Doug Clark, of Currie, Midlothian, will not mind me reproducing his entertaining letter to The Times in response to an article about some ex-SNP campaigner who “said ‘yes’ to god”. I agree with every word…
RELIGION SENDS REASON BEGGING
Kevin Pringle’s piece on Stephen Noon was very revealing (“Saying yes to God was the easiest decision I’ve ever made”, News Review, last week). Simplicity and begging seem to be at the heart of Noon’s Christianity; indeed, begging as a way of life is advocated no less than three times in the article.
Jesus, of course, also preferred to live off the labour and charity of others. Little wonder then that Noon found the decision easy: salvation is promised at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties and self-respect.
Religion asks us to give up our most precious faculty, reason, and to believe things without evidence. Morality is doing what is right without the threat of divine retribution or the possibility of divine reward. What kind of “goodness” does the threat of certain and eternal torture engender?
Among the many myths associated with religion, none is more widespread — or more disastrous in its effects — than the myth that moral values cannot be divorced from the belief in a god.
