Sir, – As an atheist, I am one of those who Archbishop Richard Clarke describes as having "fallen into the trap that religious faith is somehow an optional extra" and "not worth the bother" (Opinion, October 8th). As someone who has investigated many different faiths and found positive and negatives in all of them and made an informed decision that they are not for me, I am insulted.
I would like to offer an outsider’s view on indoctrination verses education. If a religious education teacher tells my child at school that his father is going to hell because he does not believe in the faith of the school, that is indoctrination. Education is about how to think, indoctrination is about what to believe.
As for the point of the majority of the population admitting membership of a faith community, I believe this is more related to schools being controlled by “faith-based” organisations and fear of not being able to get into these schools without the necessary faith paperwork. If statistics are what you want, go to the church on Sunday and see if the overwhelming majority of the membership show up.
I agree we need to teach value systems in schools and people need ethics to live by. How many of the bankers that ruined our country went to faith-based schools? Ninety per cent? How many of the politicians who made it possible for them to do what they did were campaigning at the church gates? Ninety per cent? Faith-based does not equal moral. Children need to be taught how to think and to be taught proper value systems; religion has not been proven to guarantee this. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DOYLE,
Birchfield Park,
Goatstown, Dublin 14.