Garry Otton has responded to my responses in the Courier. After I wrote this response the atheists went online to accuse me of ‘lying for Jesus’….there’s a prize for anyone who can demonstrate one lie! (note for my fundamentalist atheist friends – if someone disagrees with you that does not automatically mean they are lying!)
the original letters are here.
Sir, – In reply to my letter, Free Church Moderator David Robertson demonstrates his Christian response by referring to the “fear-mongering of the atheistic secularists”. Not all members of the Scottish Secular Society are atheist and I resent the slurs he aims at members who are.
Mr Robertson goes on to claim that “not a penny is handed out to religious organisations to enable them to spread their faith”. What does he make of the £300,000 grant for a joint Catholic-Jewish faith school in Newton Mearns announced only last week? He mentions the tens of thousands of people the Trussell Trust feeds and then cunningly asks: “Is this what the Scottish Secular Society are objecting to?” Was this a deliberate attempt to mislead readers into thinking we were?
As a regular poster on Facebook’s Secular Scotland, he should know the SSS publicly support the work of the Trussell Trust.
Garry Otton.
Secretary,
ScottishSecular Society,
Broughton Street,
Edinburgh.
My Response was published on the 19th:
Dear Editor,
Garry Otton of the Scottish Secular Society is upset at my ‘slurs’ against atheists, although he does not name any and I can’t find any. It was Mr Otton who described how the Secular Society were ‘afraid’, before listing a series of untrue allegations against the Christian church.
Mr Otton had claimed that millions of taxpayers money were handed out to Christian groups to enable us to spread our faith. His example is of the £300,000 grant for a Catholic-Jewish faith school in Newton Mearns. Is Mr Otton not aware that the purpose of a school is to educate not evangelise? I realise that the atheistic secularists want to use the state school system to indoctrinate children into their philosophy, but that is not how Christians work. We believe schools are for education not indoctrination. Likewise food banks are for giving out food, not for evangelism. He is correct in stating that I frequent the SS website, but the only time I have come across them mentioning the Trussell Trust is when they ran a wee campaign complaining about the Dundee food bank seeking to appoint a Christian as their manager. Whilst it was clearly a shock for the secularists that a Christian organisation sought to appoint a Christian manager to run it, most other people did not have a problem.
The fact is that the Scottish Secular Society continually campaign against religion in general and Christianity in particular as any visitor to their Facebook book will quickly ascertain. Until they cease that campaign they will continue to be regarded as little more than a small anti-religious pressure group, using secularism as a guise for their hatred of religion.
Yours etc
David A. Robertson
St Peters Free Church
4 St Peter St
Dundee
DD1 4JJ
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.