To the editor:
Two letters in Friday’s (Aug. 15) Capital News address different negative aspects of religious belief.
One by Saverio Sasso (US citizens Coming To Proselytize In Okanagan) talks about the young Mormon missionaries that have been more than usually noticeable lately. These naïve youngsters seem to have very little knowledge of the history of their own religion and are at a loss when asked to simply provide evidence for their exotic beliefs other than to regurgitate the tripe they have been fed all their lives.
Of course, they have been thoroughly brainwashed from infancy and taught to never question the authority of the church, so we should not expect much more from them. They, like missionaries all over the world, are nothing but a plague on society. Those working in Uganda, as Saverio notes, are responsible for unthinkable atrocities.
The other letter from Carol Stone (It is a question of justice and peace) nicely challenges Rabbi Shaul Osadchey’s biased assessment of the Israel/Gaza conflict and the overall plight of Palestinians in their ever-shrinking homeland.
The Palestinians are the indigenous inhabitants, at least for the past 2000 years. And so it is to be expected that they would resist the theft of their ancestral home, justified as it is, solely on the utterly ludicrous belief that some imaginary Bronze Age god gave it to the Israelites with the promise that he would drive out and destroy all the other tribes, (Exodus 23:20-33).
If it were not for archaic religious beliefs both sides could share the land in peace and cooperation to the great benefit of themselves and the entire world.
As the late Christopher Hitchens said, religion poisons everything.
Guy King,
Kelowna
