Journalist, literary critic, polemicist and constant scourge of those who promote religious superstition, Hitchens is a great loss to humanity.

It is reported that he was writing right up to his death which reminds me of another great philosopher/writer/atheist – Bertrand Russell.

Russell was still writing on the day he died in 1970 at the grand old age of 98.

Many years previously, in 1921, while on a lecture tour in China, Russell became so ill that he had the pleasure of reading his own obituary notices.

One missionary paper had an obituary notice of just one sentence which read:

Missionaries may be pardoned for heaving a sigh of relief at the news of Mr. Bertrand Russell’s death.

No doubt many purveyors of religious superstition will be greatly relieved on hearing of Mr. Hitchens passing but I believe he will continue to inspire through his writings, lectures and debates.

Sir,

In his article (Irish Catholic; November 24th) on the Fr. Reynolds/RTE defamation case Independent Senator Ronan Mullen asks:

Was the presumption of innocence that should be enjoyed by all citizens replaced by a presumption of guilt in the case of priests?

This is a very important question as the principle of innocent until proved guilty is enshrined in the legal code of all modern democracies as well as in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It would be interesting, therefore, to hear Senator Mullen’s views on Section 99 of the recent Charities Act legislation concerning the sale of Mass cards which states:

2) In proceedings for an offence under this section it shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved on the balance of probabilities; that the sale of the Mass card to which the alleged offence relates was not done pursuant to an arrangement with a recognised person.

Yours etc.
Anthony Sheridan

If I were to sell a Mass card without the permission of a Catholic bishop I could find myself serving ten years in prison and/or a fine of €300,000.

This punishment is a great deal more severe than that reserved for even the most ruthless criminals.

The draconian law does, however, serve to protect a monopoly worth countless millions to the Catholic Church.

The law also discards the principle of innocent until proved guilty as outlined in Article 48 (1) of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It only recently dawned on me that this universal right has probably been discarded for the purpose of protecting bishops and the institution of the Catholic Church in general.

Section 99 (2) of the Charities Act, 2009 states:

In proceedings for an offence under this section it shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved on the balance of probabilities; that the sale of the Mass card to which the alleged offence relates was not done pursuant to an arrangement with a recognised person.

This, I believe, is specifically designed to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of a Catholic bishop having to give evidence before a judge in a public court.

Or am I just becoming paranoid in my old age?

Irish people, Waters tells us:

Have lately become politically reckless, perhaps even a little mad.

It’s likely Waters is somewhat tongue in cheek here but his comments on the subject of madness are interesting because, in my opinion, his own sanity is under threat from the disease of religion.

In an article in the Irish Catholic (Sep. 15th) Waters makes the bizarre suggestion that if paedophilia did not exist in the Catholic Church certain sections of the media would now be campaigning to have pedophilia legalised.

They (the media) don’t regard paedophilia as a serious matter at all. If clerical abuse did not exist in the Church, I greatly suspect that we would by now have a campaign to legalise pedophilia from these quarters.

This latest lurch into religious madness stems from the media reaction to the Senator Norris affair. In Waters’ religiously damaged brain the whole matter is a giant conspiracy to do down his beloved Catholic Church.

Waters’ thesis is simple (in every sense of that word).

The media should have treated the (very minor) Norris affair with the same strength and condemnation as they treat the ongoing Catholic Church child abuse holocaust involving the rape and torture of countless thousands of innocent children.

To bolster his insane argument Waters refers to a short-lived and bizarre movement of the 1970s that campaigned for the legalization of paedophilia.

Was it the case that the thrust for acceptance of paedophilia was stymied only by the emergence of the clerical abuse scandals in the Church, which the Left saw as an opportunity to destroy the authority of the Church?

This statement indicates a mind that has begun to lose the ability to reason. It is, quite literally, a mad statement.

I wonder if the Irish Times management have noticed Mr. Waters’ madness?

The best method for flushing out believers from this theological undergrowth is to ask short, simple question and then sit back and watch them wriggle on the spit of their own irrationality.

A debate on Today with Pat Kenny between Michael Nugent, Chair of Atheist Ireland and Miguel DeArce, Geneticist and believer provided us with an excellent example how effective this strategy can be.

Towards the end of the debate the question of which animals possessed souls was being discussed when Michael Nugent went in for the kill.

Nugent: Does a cat have a soul?

DeArce: Cats have cat souls.

(Remember; this man is a scientist who lectures in Trinity).

Nugent: Do cats go to heaven?

DeArce: That is a silly question.

Nugent: Why is it a silly question?

DeArce: Because, er, er – What is heaven?

Nugent: You’re the one who says it exists. If you believe it exists; do cats go to it?

DeAcre: To me heaven is the vision of god and a cat would not gain anything from seeing god because he hasn’t got the apparatus intellectually and so forth to enjoy the vision of god.

(At this stage both myself and my cat were on the floor in fits of laughter).

By just focusing on and demanding an answer to a simple question Nugent prevented the discussion from wandering off into the undergrowth of theological definitions of heaven and by so doing he exposed the absolute absurdity of religious belief.

This pathetic attempt to divert attention away from the Catholic Church child abuse holocaust has about the same credibility as Gaddafi’s efforts to convince the Libyan people that the country was under attack by Al-Qaeda.

Somebody, somewhere out there is feverishly working on a sermon warning us that the UK riots were caused by evil secularists and depraved atheists.

That the love of material things has finally brought about the deserved downfall of a sinful species.

It could be David Quinn, John Waters, Breda O’Brien or Mary Kenny – Take your pick.

Tapping away, getting the message out that the end of days is near, that the road to perdition has run its course.

Return to the one true god all you evil ones before it’s too late, before you’re thrown into the fires of Hell for all eternity.

We’re doomed I tell you, all doomed.

I said to John Charles McQuaid; the Brothers are doing dirty things to us and he put his over my head and said – Young boy, say your prayers, I was eleven years of age.

What happened after you said this to the Archbishop?

I was brought into a room and flogged, I got a terrible beating from two Brothers. I’ll never forget it for as long as I live, that was my treat for my Confirmation.

I was one of the last children out of Artane in 1969, the place was burned down.

I know the two children who burned the place down, they were being abused by a Brother. They hid under the stage in the cinema and they set fire to the cinema.

It was the happiest day of my life, I was only twelve when it happened. I wouldn’t be alive today only that it was burned to the ground.

What great, great courage from those two boys. What sweet, sweet pleasure they must have experienced as they torched the vile institution that had caused them so much pain.

A ridiculous assertion

Dear Editor,

Your columnist Mary Kenny is a well established, well respected journalist and author.

It is therefore unlikely that her ridiculous and totally untrue assertion that atheism is nothing more than an off-shoot of Communism is a result of ignorance or bad research.

It is therefore reasonable to conclude that she has allowed her strong religious beliefs to cloud her journalistic professionalism.

Yours etc.
Anthony Sheridan

Predictably, however, not everybody was happy to see so many atheists gather in ‘Catholic’ Ireland.

Catholic militant, Mary Kenny, writing in the Irish Catholic, makes the ridiculous claim that atheism is nothing more than an offshoot of Communism.

People of this cast of mind have been around for a long time. The only real difference between now and 50 or 80 years ago is that they have changed their category. They used to be called, and to call themselves, communists.

Her article, reproduced below, is a good example of the damaging power of religion to convince humans that the irrational is rational.

Atheisim is just another `Ism’

Mary Kenny

9 Jun 2011

It is a measure of how much Ireland has changed from its traditional image that Dublin could be the location for an international conference of atheists, as it was last weekend. And that the gathering passed uncontroversially.

I’m all for tolerance of everyone’s viewpoint, providing it is not a threat to public safety, so if the atheists’ pow-wow passed off almost unremarked, so what?

It is claimed that atheism in Ireland is growing, and that some 250,000 people are now Irish atheists, although some in that group call themselves agnostics, some humanists, some secularists. So there is a fuzzing of the definition.

An atheist is someone who says there is no Deity and no supernatural life whatsoever: there is only the material world. An atheist dismisses Shakespeare’s view that ”there are more things in Heaven and Earth than you can dream of” and usually regards human beings as merely cleverer animals than, say, apes.

An agnostic is humbler. The agnostic says he doesn’t know and does not venture to suggest he has the answers to the mysteries of the universe.

A humanist believes in humanity, but a humanist may also believe in God: humanism grew out of Christianity. A secularist is someone who calls for a non-religious state: but a secularist may have a private faith. So there are many strands in this apparently new phenomenon in Ireland.

But is this movement really new? People of this cast of mind have been around for a long time. The only real difference between now and 50 or 80 years ago is that they have changed their category. They used to be called, and to call themselves, communists.

The Communist Party and its many splinters in Trotskyism, Maoism, various international movements for ‘Peace and Progress’ – formerly a cover for Communism – encompassed a range of secularist thinkers. Communism was about many things, but it was, above all, about godlessness.

To be sure, some good people, and some well-intentioned people were Communists. And not all Communist concepts were unworthy:

Communism often promoted education, and even ideals of ”virtue” among the young. However, its fundamental value was rooted in atheism.
Then communism was seen to fail, and it duly fell. And when it fell it left an ideological vacuum in its place. Some former Marxists embraced capitalism, even with gusto.

Others turned to the new religion of environmentalism, in which everything green and associated with nature was to be sacralised (even though Marxism itself was in favour of industrialisation and most definitely against Nature: Marx would have regarded tree-hugging as ‘rural idiocy’). And others still turned to atheism in its various forms, whether it be called secularism, humanism or even ‘new ethics’.

The vacuum left by the world-wide ideology of communism remains the principle mainspring. People look for new ‘isms’ where old ones fail.
But usually the new isms, in their turn, are found wanting, and in the fullness of time faith is reborn in the hearts of men and women, as St Augustine predicted it always would. All you have to do is to live long enough to see the wheel complete its eternal return.