STEVEN Lawrie’s linguistic dilemma (Letters, December 31) is easily resolved surely? Atheism is the belief that gods do not exist. It thus stands in extreme opposition to the belief that they do, that is, theism. There is the mid-way position of agnosticism - belief that neither claim can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.
Recent concessionary suggestion, coming from Peter Kearney (“If we want to be a pluralists society, faith schools must play their part”, Agenda, The Herald, December 29) principally on behalf of the Scottish Catholic Church, to incorporate secularism as a “quasi-religion” within a broadly religious based (pre-tertiary?) education structure is evidently doomed to failure linguistically; for secularism is the opposition to religious connections; however and wherever. But linguistic failure is the least of the problem.
Theism is subdivided into religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and so on, each with codified assumptions on the nature of specific deities. Secularism therefore being a denial of religious involvement might still present in three shades: theistic, atheistic and agnostic. Few adults as far as I am aware are extreme and vehement enough in their views as to deny freedom of thought and in particular freedom of religious thought and action, as Mr Kearney seems to think to the contrary. Many, however, believe that pre-tertiary education as organised by the state should deal largely and primarily with what is known or indisputably knowable, that is, should be largely non-speculative. Thereby pre-tertiary education would fall under the blanket of agnostic secularism (no speculation about deities or religious association) as it does constitutionally in some countries.
It is not the responsibility of the state-funded pre-tertiary educational system, the schools or their teachers to speculate upon the existence, nature or requirements of deities to their young pupils. If that is thought useful or necessary by any parent then the responsibility falls upon that individual to supply it, possibly via the good offices of the various religions and their denominations but, and this is the important point, outwith the state- provided educational system.
Darrell Desbrow,
Overholm, Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbrightshire.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel