WRITE to congratulate Siamak Alimi on the letter of April 30.
Too bad it was not placed beside A. Bottomley's letter of support of the local media-hungry Rev Nick Bromfield to offer fellow Review readers some balance.
Siamak is absolutely correct to focus both on Bromfield's lack of any evidence in his assertions and his facts about the case of Nurse Chaplin in what amounts to a hi-jacked misrepresentation of the NHS Trust's aims and conduct in requesting she remove her cross during work on grounds of health and safety (this is a standard uniform policy – so that any necklace is not tugged from any member of staff's neck inadvertently by patients).
However, rational people need to be reminded that, sadly, people of faith do not enter into it because of abstract philosophical speculation with recall to evidence and reasoning and, indeed, often they see that kind of truth below their own. Thus they are also unlikely to respond effectively to rationally-based challenges to it. For them faith is above reason.
Most secularists accept this. What concerns us is the indoctrination of children into all faiths before the age of independent, reasoned consent at their own coming of age. Any sceptic who has actually bothered to read Dawkin's The God Delusion (as opposed to have only an opinion on it) will see that his prime motivation is this very subject. The same for Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great but also he adds concerns over the violence that comes of organised systems of faith. That is not to say that non-faith is necessarily more peaceful, but separated from the state and the main fields of influence we would have removed the leading reason behind so many of today's more serious issues. Think 9/11 and the London bombings; the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; Rwanda, Sudan or the fall of Yugoslavia.
As for the pro-Bromfield response in the April 30 edition, like the Rev Bromfield himself, A Bottomley's letter seems to by-pass the facts and seeks instead to make cheap populist jibes to further the case that the church is somehow under threat by invisible militant secularists. I'll stand up for the rights of innocent minds, but I doubt Bromfield feels that is the threat he's wary of.
The NHS Trust was found by an independent review to be acting more than fairly with the cross-bearing nurse, S Chaplin, and it was on health and safety grounds the request was originally made. Now I am not interested in the bureaucracy and nanny-state nature of the H&S standing in the first place but the hi-jacking of Ms Chaplin's case by the evangelical mob to further their supernatural agenda is absolutely wrong. What's more it's – dare I say it – un-Christian inasmuch it is a dishonest representation of events. But I guess we could say that about the dinosaurs and evolution.
Nonetheless there is absolutely no pre-mediated campaign to affront any faith in the original request, judgement and ruling.
To suggest there was is to be ignorant of the facts.
Non-militant secularist, St Briavels.