WHEN I was a young man, I imagined that by the time I reached old age, people would have grown out of the childish idea that gods existed and would conduct their affairs on rational principles. So here I am, within a week of my 60th birthday, reading the farrago of drivel about the recent riots penned by Peter Simpson of the Free Methodist Church in Penn (‘Riots were due to loss of any fear of God’, letters August 26).
Mr Simpson opines that the cause of the riots was that ‘there is no longer any fear of God’.
Good grief! What Mr Simpson and his ilk seem unable to grasp is that there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of his god, or of any other gods.
Gods were invented by primitive peoples to explain the phenomena that ruled their lives – the rising and setting of the sun, thunder and lightning, the success or failure of harvests and so on. It is now 2011 and science has now investigated and explained these things, yet people like Mr Simpson persist in blaming a lack of ‘righteousness’ for the failures of society.
Even assuming, however, that one believed in god at all, what makes Mr Simpson think that his is the only god, or the only interpretation of this being’s will? Jews and Muslims and others also believe in god and I imagine they might find Mr Simpson’s last paragraph rather disparaging of their beliefs.
Can we please investigate the real causes of the riots – the societal issues that gave rise to them – without being distracted by these irrelevant religious explanations?
James Cadle, Fox Lane, Holmer Green
