SIR: In your letters page, I read of people who wish to express their rights in society. Then we get Bible thumpers who preach their ethics. While they may appear sincere, do these people not realise it is they who are now in a minority and who have been brainwashed into believing a religion based on fear? It is mythical nonsense practised through priestcraft and created by a bunch of religious nuts (who were probably members of the Flat Earth Society) in AD 325 at the Council of Nicea - a most important date in the history of human development. We really did enter the dark ages!

As mentioned in my previous letter to this page, the religious provisions in the 1944 Education Act should be modified and our children given a balanced view, instead of having a one-sided view on any religion. At the moment, our children are brainwashed. This is nothing short of mental child abuse! Bigotry and hatred spawned by religion has a lot to answer for. Our history books and the present day confirm this!

The masses today are becoming more educated. Not because of Christianity, but in spite of it! We have, through the pursuit of knowledge, made tremendous advances. The masses are no longer held in ignorance. We are supposed to be a "free" country. Why is it then that, in 1998, we still have the Common Law offence of blasphemous libel, which the Law Commission urged to be removed from the Statute Book? Even now a secularist view is still censored -through the media, TV, education etc from redressing the balance. What are the Christians afraid of? I challenge anybody - MPs, churchmen etc - to give me a logical reason why this is so.

I am not against anybody who wishes to worship a god. That's fine. But before any fundamental religious person attacks me for heresy, I will advocate what Carl Sagan said in his excellent TV series Cosmos. Standing in New York's Central Library surrounded by millions of books, he pointed to a tiny section and said: "It is only possible in one person's lifetime to read this many books. He then made the profound statement: "The trick is to read the right books."

?R Slater

Darvel Close, Bolton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.