Letters to Newsline

Please send your letters for publication to letters@secularism.org.uk. We want to publish as many letters as possible, so please keep them brief. We reserve the right to edit. Opinions expressed in letters are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the NSS.

From Alex Neill:
Oh how I laughed out loud this morning whilst listening to the coverage on the Today programme of the comments by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.

Richard Dawkins was interviewed first, and came across as articulate, credible and reasonable. About ten minutes later, Murphy-O'Connor was interviewed. In contrast he came across as a bumbling fool, eventually falling back on the worn out scare mongering of likening a godless society to a dictatorship like Hitler's regime. SUCH a bad advertisement for the religious having ANY decision making powers at all!

John Humphrys did a good job interviewing them both, but I wonder if he would have been quite as tough on Murphy O'Connor (considering his very public personal views and recent book) if Dawkins had not challenged him to do so?

From Sue Mayer:
Ref: the abominable US Jesus Camps, evangelical indoctrination holiday schemes, that were being promoted on youTube, I understand that some of them have been removed because of hostile reaction, but anyone who wants to can see one response from Godfree4me.

People might also look out for ‘Holiday Play Schemes’ run by evangelical sects in this country; they are quite common. The brainwashing is not as crudely overt as the US schemes, but their purpose is intended to recruit young souls for Jesus with more subtle methods. Though what can be done about them I do not know, since unless there is adequate provision for children whose parents cannot take the summer holidays off from work, many parents will shut their eyes to their evangelising purpose.

From Robin Blick:
Brian Robinson would like to know which edition of the Koran I quoted from a couple of weeks back. Thereby hangs a tale. In my lecturing days some twenty years ago, an Islamic female student, saddened by my obvious lack of any kind of religious belief, decided to save my soul by presenting me with a single volume edition of the Koran, with both Arabic and English texts, complete with editorial commentary. It was from this edition that I took my quotations.

The very next time I taught the class, at its conclusion another Islamic female took me aside and warned me that the edition I had been given was, to use her own words, 'falsified', and pressed upon me her own, authentic, two volume edition. You might have thought that with the score level, honour had been satisfied in this (very civilised, by today’s barbaric standards) contest between the sects.

Not a bit of it. A few days later, I was ambushed in a corridor by the first student, who was carrying a bulging plastic bag. Inside were no fewer than five enormous leather-bound volumes, being a greatly expanded version of the edition she had given to me in class. In the space of less than a week, I had gone from possessing no Koran to three Korans, comprising eight vast volumes! What next, I remember thinking. I can only assume that the out-of-class transaction had been designed to steal a march on the rival faction. But, you may well ask, why the rivalry? I made it my business to find out. The translation and commentaries of the second Koran in two volumes was first published in Cairo in 1934, a product of Sunni Islam, of the Hanafi school of law (there are three others). The first Koran, from which I quoted, was published in 1981 by the London Mosque and I quote, ‘under the auspices of Hadrat Mirza Nasir Ahmad, Third successor of the Promised Messiah and Head of the Ahmadiyyah Movement in Islam’. The five volume edition was published in 1988, by the Fourth Successor to the same Messiah. This sect, originating in Pakistan, is regarded as totally heretical by all other Muslims, and has been subjected to vicious persecution by state and Islamic authorities in Pakistan.

And yet, when I compare the passage in question in the rival editions, the translation differs only slightly, and the commentary hardly at all. The Sunni version, referring to the Jews as ‘the People of the Book’, says that 'most of them are perverted transgressors' (verse 110) and that ‘shame is pitched over them (like a tent) wherever they are found’ (verse112), while the commentary reads: ‘The tent of the wicked wherever they are found is ignominy, shame and humiliation…their home will be destitution and misery’.

Brian Robinson, not having been the beneficiary of Islamic conversionary zeal, has had to make do with an infidel Penguin edition. Hence the lack of anti-Semitic footnotes.

From Steve Hill:
I see Catholic schools are excluding pupils who were not baptised at under 4 months of age, or within a few weeks of birth. (Newsline last week). On these criteria they would have to refuse places to Jesus Christ, St Paul, and quite a lot of the usual suspects. But why should we expect anything but hypocrisy?

From Paul Braterman:
Last week, Lawrence Woolfe wrote "I was quite impressed and amused by a certain movie clip on YouTube with one reaction to the problem [of missionaries on the doorstep]."

So I clicked the link, and got a message telling me that the clip had been removed because of a terms of use violation. Does anyone know what happened here, or what terms of use were allegedly violated? Could someone who saw the clip tell us what was in it, so that we can form an opinion on whether YouTube acted appropriately? Restrictions on the flow of ideas should never be taken lightly.

From Muriel Fraser:
Dilys Bentley rightly says that we don't need humanism and Pip Apps mentions one reason why: that human rights suffice. Barbara Smoker counters that humanism is a help in “trying to lead a decent life”, but maybe humanists should stop talking about their own personal morality and start defending the rights of others. That might be a faster route to leading a decent life than endlessly chatting about it. Maybe they should even join the fight for secularism, which helps protect the rights of all.

However, the BHA seems to be too busy trying to get taxpayers money for themselves, just like the other religions. (And the UK isn’t the only country where humanists aim to get on “religious benefits”.) Smoker suggests that if we found ourselves in prison we'd welcome a humanist chaplain. Well, if he's publicly funded, not me. If one of those people walked into my cell I’d inform him that he was betraying secularism by accepting state money for his quasi-religious ministrations. I’d also ask him what business he had supporting a system which leads to “getting God” in order to impress the parole board. And as I showed him the door, I'd tell him that he should be ashamed of himself for his own little part in helping to entrench religious privilege.

From James Cameron:
I was interested to read (Newsline last week) of NSS involvement with the Welsh Assembly on the issue of organ donation. I wondered what the NSS position was on “presumed consent” where the wishes of a deceased person were unknown, i.e. not registered as a donor and no next of kin.

This is obviously an emotive issue but I take the view that a person does not stop being a person just because they are dead, and the right to decide what happens to us after death is the last right we have. If a deceased person is not a registered donor then consent should not, and must not, be assumed.

The fact that transplants can be done at all is remarkable and the procedure is of obvious benefit to the recipient. However I believe that it is essential to obtain explicit consent from a potential donor and the shortfall in organs must be met by encouraging more people to register as donors. The presumption of consent is arrogant and driven by politicians whose jobs depend on lowering mortality statistics and by a medical establishment who still see death as professional failure.

Please understand that I am NOT suggesting that patients awaiting transplant should give up the ghost; I am in favour of transplants as long as the rights of the donor are respected. If someone does not wish to be a donor, for whatever reason, then that is their decision and must be respected. They should simply not register as a donor; they should not have to “opt out”.

Since the NSS appears to be “pro-choice” in the widest sense, I would appeal to you to oppose presumed consent as an assault on the rights of those who literally cannot object for themselves.

From Joan Wade:
Fiona Weir (Newsline 25 April) and others have raised their great concern about the alarming rate of the increase in the human population mainly due to the Catholic Church's opposition to contraception.

While I was preparing my evening meal on Bank Holiday Monday I was only half watching/listening to the TV but on South Today local news my ears soon pricked up when I heard this story. It was reported that, particularly at holiday times, an animal charity has to take in many more unwanted pets and find new homes for them. One of the reasons given by one family for handing in their pet was that because they are Roman Catholic they don't believe in neutering animals.

God help us! I didn’t know that Catholic parents brainwash their pets as well as their children with irresponsible Catholic dogmas.

From Dennis Morris:
I am the past President of the Humanist Society of Western Australia, after serving as President for 8 years until I had a stroke. Before that, in the 1970s and 1980s I was Founder and President of The Society of Freethinkers in South Africa.

Before I had the stroke I wrote my 6th book, RELIGION: The Greatest Confidence Trick in History. The preview can be found here. Would you please be so kind as to mention it in your next newsletter, so that your members can read the preview and decide
for themselves whether they would like to buy the book online.

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