Ian Boyne, in his column on Sunday, September 6, has finally asked the only important theological question: "Is religion good for society?". Questions about the existence of God are irrelevant since, by definition, He is immortal and the immortality of anything cannot be falsified. Even if it were possible to prove that the origin of the universe required the action of a prime mover, we still have to ask whether He went into early retirement after setting the whole thing in motion.

What we are left with is a question as to what useful purpose religious belief serves. My view is that it once served a useful purpose in the moral evolution of humans. The Bible, for instance, traces this evolution of a God with the morality of a primitive warlord, of whom David was the epitome, a man after God's own heart, who no decent Christian father would allow near his wife or daughter.

Human morality

The New Testament presents the zenith of human morality in the character of Jesus of Nazareth. Unfortunately, the Apostles, led by Paul, made a mess of the teachings of Jesus, not unlike what Lenin and others did to the works of Karl Marx. I doubt whether the Jesus of the Gospels would have treated Annanias and Sapphira in the manner that the Apostles had over the withholding of church funds.

I think that, at all times, both Christians and atheists need to read the Bible in the context of the time in which it was written. The truth is that it was not unreasonable for humans to believe some of the preposterous things that they used to believe. The idea that the Earth was flat and the stars were the lamps of heaven were scientifically sound hypotheses in terms of the paradigms of normal science of the day. The fact that they were later falsified does not make them any less scientific.

Moral lessons

The moral lessons of the Bible are no different. Aborting even a deformed foetus in a time when, life expectancy was low, the infant mortality rate was very high, and women, very often, would die while giving birth, would, quite understandably, be seen as a sin. However, in a world where medical science has removed these problems and has given us the ability to reproduce without sexual intercourse, it seems reasonable enough to choose which foetus we wish to develop to maturity.

To modify a point made by Jean Paul Sartre, whether God exists, it does not change anything for man. We still remain responsible for interpreting the sign.

I am, etc.,

R. HOWARD THOMPSON

roi_anne@hotmai.com

Mandeville, Manchester