Religious myths

SO another religious festival comes and goes suitably strewn with meaningless platitudes and full of empty rhetoric.

But not divorced from this enduring fantasy, The Scotsman on Good Friday published a number of articles describing religious persecution from around the world, from children abused by paedophiles dressed in religious garb, supposed "witches" sentenced to be beheaded and young women to be lashed for drinking beer.

And these examples only scratch the surface of what this whole fictional nonsense has empowered zealots to do.

Mankind's intellectual powers have increased enormously, our ability to achieve continues to astound, but still the mind is locked in medieval absurdities.

Scientists and politicians regale us about the dangers of global warming, swine flu, over-population and any other subject ostensibly driving the world towards imminent Armageddon.

But they say nothing about the dangers of our inexplicable obsession with religion in all its shades. And arguably this is much the greater danger to civilisation and indeed could well prove to be our Achilles' heel.

It defies all logic that so many people, and governments, need to be sustained by such a numbing relic of an era and stage of human development long past and surely of no positive consequence in modern society.

JIMMY WILSON

John Street

Dalbeattie