Harking back to Theo Hobson's article “It's all the same to them” [The Tablet, 13 December] and the poor outcomes when teaching “the beliefs, teachings and sources of wisdom” of various major religions, would we be better with a different focus rather than abandoning religious education in schools altogether? I agree that who wears what funny outfit and who eats or doesn't eat what isn't going to make sense to anyone, let alone children, with no religious sensibilities. It often doesn't make sense to the believers in each faith group. What if we started with the values of each religion, where those are set down, how and by whom they are interpreted and put into practice in each age?
Through values you could see that we're much more the same than different. This is only going to become more important as our increasingly troubled world shows. United we stand ....
The source of values in each religion introduces the sacred texts of those religions.
How those values are interpreted and practised in each era introduces the authoritative bodies for interpreting texts.
It would also show that in some cases there is no such body, that each individual interprets scripture for him or herself. The pros and cons of that could be discussed and evaluated.
This approach would show the Christian origins of humanist and even atheist beliefs.
Where values have been codified in legislation, it would acknowledge the Judeo-Christian tradition from which those laws developed.
Such a programme would allow the entire community, through its common values, to call out Muslim suicide bombers or Christian politicians who would have the poorest of the poor be homeless and starve on inadequate supporting benefits.
I get tired of the lazy atheist criticism of religion as a fairytale about some mythical old man in the sky or because it concentrates on the number of angels flapping wings on the head of a pin. I don't ask atheists to believe but they could do all religious believers of whatever stripe a favour if they knew what our values are and called us to live up to them.
Margaret Callinan, Victoria, Australia
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