Editor, The Times:
A short while back I wrote about how I felt that both democracy and capitalism are failing the citizens of this earth.
A third failing element in our society is religion.
It is not all bad. With the election of a new pope, Francis (the first Jesuit pope ever) the Catholic Church has the best chance for renewal that it’s had for quite some time.
However, for the negative, let’s start with Russia. Since the return to God to that formerly heathen country the Russian Orthodox Church has reasserted its influence. A good part of Putin’s homophobic semi-dictatorship is backed to the full by religious Russians. As my late waggish friend put it, “The only thing worse than a godless Russian is a godly one.”
In the United States, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line, pressure has put on schools to teach, alongside Darwin, Huxley and the rest, the Creation story.
Back to my waggish friend, “Adam and Eve rode a dinosaur to church 6,000 years ago.”
Not only that but homophobic fundamentalists, after losing ground in Barak Obama’s America, move off to places like Uganda to advise on how to criminalize gay people — the death penalty, no less.
In case one gets the impression that I’m dumping too much on Christianity, let’s look at the rest of the world. In India a fundamentalist Hindu whose past is tainted with violence has just been elected president. In Myanmar, Buddhists (supposedly peaceful) massacre Muslims. In Nigeria Christians and Muslims are at each other’s throats.
And the utter depravity of ultra-fundamentalist Islam is so in one’s face that to deny it is to be wilfully blind – Islam, once the most tolerant and progressive of religions.
As Richard Dawkins put it, 95 per cent of Muslims are good honest people. It’s the five per cent – the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram bunch – that turn Islam into a force for evil.
Religion can be a positive force. Think William Wilberforce with his great anti-slavery campaign in England.
However in the 21st Century not much of the positive side of religion is evident.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
