Secular standards

Having 600 Facebook “members” and 300 Twitter followers for the whole of Scotland is tiny – especially when you consider that some of those “followers”  are Christians like me who are open-minded enough to want to listen to other points of view; and that many individual  congregations and church leaders have more “followers” on  Facebook and Twitter than the whole of Secular Scotland.

Mr Otton thinks the government should listen to Secular Scotland because it managed to get 1,516 people to sign a petition on religion in schools.

Given that the government ignored the 50,000-plus people who signed a petition against same-sex marriage, this seems somewhat fanciful thinking.

As is Neil Barber’s view that the churches only have so many members because of “compulsory belief enforced by the threat of death, torture or imprisonment” – something which he believes is “still the case in many parts of the world”.

Perhaps Mr Barber of the  Edinburgh Secular Society could let us know some of the  countries in the world where church membership is enforced by death, torture and imprisonment.

If this is the standard of argument and evidence that secularists provide then it should give the rest of us pause before we rush headlong into the Brave New World of secular Scotland.

David Robertson

Solas CPC

Peters Free Church

St Peter Street

Dundee

Neil Barber offers a blinkered defence of the paucity of numbers in secular societies. I agree with him that ideas outlive the individuals who conceived them. The best example is Jesus of Nazareth.

Out of such an unpromising life conclusion came the largest living faith expression in human history.

Christianity has been a liberating movement for its near 2,000 years and it continues to be so in China and other places today. How did all this happen?

(Rev Dr) Robert  Anderson

Blackburn & Seafield Church

MacDonald Gardens

Blackburn

My questions as to why  the National Secular Society so often seems to question religious belief itself is answered by two of its members who are also members of the other tiny secular societies in Scotland  (Letters, 26 June).

Numbers are important, as in democratic elections, because they show how much support a body has nationally.

Mr Neil Barber, who is uncharacteristically reticent about revealing the numbers in his  Edinburgh Secular Society, should understand this – but then perhaps he does and perhaps therein lies his reticence.

Garry Otton does not deal with my central thesis that secular activism too often spills over into what appears to many to be an active dislike of religious belief.

Readers might like to peruse Mr Otton’s online pieces such as “Is religion fascism?” to get a taste of his own views.

GUS LOGAN

York Road

North Berwick