Fundamentalist rejection

Costa Andre Georghiou (Religion divides humanity and poses the greatest threat to our progress, July 20) writes that “one should be careful not to generalise. It is not always religion that divides us”. His whole piece is, however, filled with generalised statements about the dangers of religion.

The examples of such dangers are furthermore mostly related to fundamentalism, which forms only a small fraction of world religions. In his equally fundamentalist rejection of all religion per se, he exactly displays the trends he so one-sidedly condemns: intolerance for the truth of religions and blindness to the good flowing from religions.

Georghiou’s piece displays a complete ignorance of the way in which classical religious texts function, calling them filled with “unsubstantiated myths” and “fairy tales”. (Business Day would never publish a piece on economics that demonstrates such a low level of basic subject knowledge).

In his blanket, ideological rejection of religion, he is unable to discern the ecumenical power of religions co-operating in ecology and peace building, nor the key role of religious institutions in education, social services, medicine and science. I wonder what he would say to explain the transition to democracy in SA without names like Luthuli, Tutu, Boraine, Lapsley and others. For Georghiou, they are all religious, and, in his words, people “impeding humanity’s mental progress”.

Piet Naudé

Bellville