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God understands religious doubt
Read the article / show / issue that provoked me to write a letter and my response below that or go straight to my response
Date Posted on this Site
December 22, 2007
Publication
Port Hope Evening Guide
Publication Date
December 19, 2007
Published Content
To the Editor:
As far as I know, atheism is not a crime in Canada. The police do not stop people and ask them if they believe in God.
So, what does the local Catholic school board have against atheists, particularly the author of The Golden Compass, a children's book recently pulled from the libraries of local Catholic schools? ("Who has the right to decide what you will read?" - Dec. 12)
Atheists, and their weaker cousins, agnostics, are not noticeably less moral than anyone else. I have never heard of an atheist strangling his daughter because she refused to wear a headscarf, or of atheism being identified with a particular crime, unlike the Catholic Church and pedophilia among priests.
Atheism is a belief system in its own right. It simply says that there is insufficient evidence to say with certainty that God exists. I am a Loch Ness Monster atheist and a Little Green Men from Mars atheist, and by similar reasoning, a God atheist. But that doesn't stop me reading the novels of Grahame Greene and Evelyn Waugh, both Catholics, or admiring John Henry Cardinal Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, possibly the finest example of nineteenth-century English prose. Could it be that I have what the administrators of the local Catholic school board seem to lack - an open mind?
So, I ask them, whoever they are, not to discriminate against atheists. Pity us if you must; teach us if you can; but don't assume that God does not understand religious doubt. Ask St. Augustine.
It is a shame if the separate school board discourages independent thought in its students. It would be a shame, too, if it were blind to the great privilege we have of being able to think, in unique and wonderful ways, about the deepest philosophical questions for ourselves.
George A. James / Port Hope
My Response Letter
Although apparently well read, the letter writer is ignorant of history. His assertions that atheists "are not noticeably less moral than anyone else" and that atheism has never been "identified with a particular crime" are erroneous. The greatest crimes in history were perpetrated by atheists living in the 20th century: Hitler killed upwards of 12 million people; Stalin killed at least three million and as many as 60 million people, and Chairman Mao killed an estimated 40 million people.
Atheism is not doubt, as the letter writer implies; it is denial. When it is foisted upon young and impressionable minds that do not possess enough discernment to understand the fallacy, it can corrupt. Catholic educators are well within their rights to deny access to literature that can only harm those young persons they are charged with protecting.
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
No