Time to broaden school religious instruction?

THE supporters of religious instruction in schools need look no further than the ‘‘Faith and Reason’’ article, (ODT, 18.5.18) on the opposite page to see why such instruction in only one narrow and dogmatic religion should be stopped.

In ‘‘Faith and Reason’’, Dr Lynn Taylor, a pastoral theologian at Otago University, using all the vague ‘‘theology speak’’ which can be mustered, attempts to convince us that the arts bear witness to divine transcendence and arises from God.

Dr Taylor seems to forget that the arts were around a long time before the Christian God became popular and that early Greek, Roman and Celtic pagans and atheists did some astonishing art work.

The academic then refers to the importance to the arts of the Holy Trinity, which was promulgated by Emperor Constantine around 330AD to stop squabbles between Christian sects who could not agree on the nature of the JesusGod connection.

It was an arbitrary decision which became part of Roman Catholic Church dogma and is still believed by many nonprogressive theologians today. Dr Taylor concludes that the arts, along with lovely sunrises, autumn leaves and auroras and other ‘‘wow!’’ things, are all down to God, when these are all readily explicable biological and natural phenomena.

A prominent exChristian said he became an atheist because religion made him say and do silly things.

School needs to be about teaching kids facts and how to reason and communicate well to succeed.

There is a place for teaching kids about all religions, as part of social studies or history perhaps, but not for religious instruction in one narrow and highly questionable faith.

Stewart Webster

Halfway Bush

Dangerous cities

SEEING the headline, ‘‘Making the world more dangerous’’ (ODT, 10.5.18), I thought the article would refer to Dunedin emulating Devonport as a site for military manufacturing.

D. S. Boyes

Dunedin