GUS Logan (Letters, August 16) takes issue with the findings of the Humanists' survey of religious beliefs on several points. One of these is his scepticism of the finding that 53 per cent never pray. He avers that "few people ... in situations of extreme stress, illness or family crisis do not, in the end, pray".
Following a typical Church of Scotland upbringing (church, Sunday cchool, Bible class) I found, as a teenager, that I could no longer subscribe to the supernatural elements of Christian (or, indeed, any other religious) belief. My reasons and rationale for this are too comprehensive to enter into in a letter of this nature.
In 1971, my son, age four, had a serious accident, while supervised, in a friend's back garden. At the time, he had no pulse or heartbeat and was, to all intents and purposes, dead. I did not pray. Instead, I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and kept him breathing for 20 minutes until medical assistance arrived. I did not pray in the nightmare journey to hospital with the ambulance siren going, nor did I pray during the long night through which, the doctors told me, he had to make it if he was to have any chance of survival. Instead I relied on the skills and professionalism of those treating him. What would have been the point of praying to an omnipotent God (in my view non-existent), who, by this very definition, had allowed, or even caused, my son's accident? My son will be 52 next month, and has his own family. What would have happened if I had simply stood back and prayed?
In common with most people, during the intervening years, I have had my share of "situations of extreme stress, illness or family crisis". I have never prayed. I have relied on my own resources and on the love and support of family and friends, and offered that same love and support to others. I have survived, and have, I hope, lived well. Within the next relatively few years, I will die, and my physical body will revert into the elements of which it is composed. I will live on, for a time, in the memory of those same family and friends, and for longer, I hope, in the genetic inheritance I have bequeathed to my grandchildren and their successors. I am one of the "substantial majority who ... do not believe in an afterlife".
This is the message that I, as a Humanist funeral celebrant until recently following my retirement from teaching, passed on to those who requested my services. There was never any question of "Mummy ... looking down on her kids and loving them always". There was an understanding that Mummy's (or Daddy's, or big sister's or husband's) love is transformational, its effects will continue to be felt beyond death, and that we owe it to our departed love ones to make the best of the life they have given us, or supported us in.
The Humanist ethos is one of love, respect, tolerance and equality for all. If this seems to Gus Logan to resemble the Christian ethos, I would ask him to extend the same courtesies to Humanists, whose beliefs are as deeply felt and sincerely held as his own.
Jean E Park,
33 Bank Street, Irvine.
IT was a boost to read Angela Haggarty's article ("The sneering dismissiveness of spirituality harms us all'", The Herald, August 15).
The evangelical church I belong to has a small but increasing number of recent recruits attending in order to find sanctuary either from absence of faith, or from persecution. One person has attended from last Remembrance Day, "feeling a need for more spirituality, and to come nearer to God" (own words). Another comes from north of the Clyde because the church (still attended in between visits to us through admirable loyalty) lacks spiritual life. Two families have been attending from April 2017 and May 2018 respectively, having fled to UK, one from an extreme political threat, the other from gangster predation.
Jesus called His churches "lampstands" in the Book of Revelation, and for us these 'cases' are examples of lights in today's spiritual darkness. We also value the freedom of public expression of opinion that the Herald's columns and other newspapers, in the Western sector at least, offer.
Martin Archibald,
49 Kinpurnie Road, Oldhall, Paisley
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