Sir, – Many of your correspondents assert that the teaching of religion is essential for the turning out of adults with an ethical approach to life. When they say “religion” it is of course Christianity that they mean, but just what aspect of Christianity do they speak of? Is it the love-centred code of conduct that was preached by Jesus, or is it the supposedly fundamental statement of Christianity that is expressed in the Nicene Creed?
Remarkably, although the essence of Jesus’s preaching is generally considered to consist of love of one’s neighbours and of the world, the Nicene Creed does not contain a single word on such matters. All it contains is primitive nonsense about the origin of the “world” and assertions of the truth of impossible events like rising from the dead and virgin birth. In the fourth century, such beliefs may have been tenable, and it may have been crucial to assert the singularity of God in the face of competing, alternative belief systems, but who nowadays loses a night’s sleep over such matters? If such nonsense is the content of religious instruction in schools, then the sooner it is ended the better.
It seems that the pressure to retain it comes mainly from parents who would be unable to articulate Christian doctrine, let alone pass it on to their children but who, for superstitious reasons, insist on foisting that task on others.
If, on the other hand, it is Jesus’s message of love that is the content of “religious instruction”, then it could be easily included in a general ethics course, and leave the useless theology to those who find it of interest. – Yours, etc,
TERRY MOYLAN,
Dublin 12.