Nobody expects the Inquisition

The blind faith brigade is on the march through our public educational system.

I find myself in rare agreement with Raymond Hall (News & Star, February 27) in horror at the conflict – expressed bloodily by suicide bombers – between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq.

It is, I think, a clear demonstration of the potential for evil in religion, with its nitpicking dogmatic differences between the various sects of Islam - and also, of course, Judaism and Christianity, the latter horribly demonstrated over many years in Northern Ireland – let alone the conflicts between Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.

Mr Hall says that the regular deaths of Iraqis caused by suicide bombers are “as incomprehensible as Haiti’s tragedy.” To the latter, we must now add the earthquake in Chile, which, I think, makes it even harder to believe the supernatural mythology of all the major monotheistic religions which claims that we were created by a divine being, who may or may not, watch over us still.

Whatever sort of benign creator permits such natural horrors, which among insurers are termed “Acts of God”? If not that divine being, whom can we blame? Certainly, even the most ardent accusers of mankind over climate change cannot say that the Haitians and Chileans brought disastrous earthquakes upon themselves. My own view is that such horrors are merely the consequence of our living on the thin crust of a large glob of molten carbon, still bubbling long after the Big Bang that created it.

And now, with both major parties apparently pandering to the so-called “faith community”– a very small percentage of the UK population – in the run-up to a General Election, we have seen our New Labour government kow-tow to a sometime Hitler Youth member, sitting on the Vatican’s papal throne, by permitting faith schools, most of which are, by the way, taxpayer-funded, to provide sex and relationships education to pupils in accordance with the school’s religious ethos.

As Monty Python used to say: “Nobody expects the Inquisition”, but those of us who don’t wear haloes on our sleeves should take warning. The blind faith brigade is on the march again.