Sir, – As a regular reader of your Letters page I am tired of reading usually lengthy and rambling letters in condemnation of Christian religions, especially when they run schools. Even today (Letters April 11th) you publish one which starts off: “Ours isn’t a Christian country” even though the subject is the census form. You have failed to publish several submitted by me pointing out misunderstandings of certain religious dogma printed on your Letters page that suggest that religion is all wrong and a “bad thing”.
I have no hesitation in joining the 90 per cent of our population ticking the religion box in the census form.
True I do not regularly attend church services; but I do frequently attend services that mark significant events in our lives; baptism, first communion, confirmation, marriage, death. Where would we be without them? Religion has been around for a long time. I suppose it started three and a half thousand years ago when a great leader of a nomadic tribe in the deserts of the Middle East first laid down “commandments”, and there were far more than 10, forbidding people to kill or maim each other, or to steal or rape, and to guard their diet. Also he introduced the idea of a great enforcer of the law – but unnamed (the word “God” is of much later time). This enabled them to survive.
Now this great system was adopted by Judaism and later Christianity and has served mankind very well for thousands of years. But we are now too sophisticated and too well-educated to accept “religion”.
Fair enough, we know that the universe has evolved over billions of years and mankind has evolved over millions of years from the early homo sapiens. So I suppose "god" cannot be a "person" or indeed "three persons".
But hold on – who or what created matter from which the universe has evolved, or life from which homo sapiens evolved.
Could it be that our very finite minds simply cannot grasp the infinite? Might there be, after all, an infinite force that created and controls matter and life that the churches – religions – in their wisdom simplified for us mortals. And is that a “bad thing”? – Yours, etc,
W J MURPHY,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.