MORALITY AND CIVILISATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 261, 3 November 1932, Page 6

MORALITY AND CIVILISATION.

Had certain statistics and other matter contained in my last letter been published "Christian" could scarce have accused me of lacking evidence for my statements. It ia not a "fact" that the non-Christian part ofl the population is no better morally than the Christian. "Christian's" claim for equality in morality will not stand. "When some years ago the statistician regularly published full tables of the religions of prisoners these invariably showed, when percentages were calculated from the census returns of religious beliefs of the whole population, that nondiristians supplied less percentage of prisoners than any religious sect. Figures from America last year showed that in a reformatory harbouring several thousand criminals only nine were non-believers. "The Journal of American Medicine," commenting on this and similar facts, stated, "That is perhaps the most distressing comment on the moral and ethical significance of modern religion as a directing force in the life of the modern individual. . . . The .prison statistics reveal that a belief in God is no guarantee whatever of good conduct, and, conversely, that a disbelief in God in no way relieves a man from a sense of moral responsibility. It has . . . been a notable circumstance that disbelievers and atheists were always extremely law- . abiding and well conducted." "Christian" will not find the scientific treatment of alcoholism in New Zealand. But in England and America, are clinics where the remarkably successful results of scientific method make the efforts of religious emotionalism as practised here seem pitifully Inadequate. Christianity has obviously failed to eradicate drunkenness and gambling, which have been most prevalent when it was most firmly believed. Science has scarcely been accorded an opportunity of operating in these fields, but in any case it would ensure, by proper training and education, that children did not grow into dipsomaniacs and gamblers rather than struggle to remedy the effects of a training which has been proved an insufficient safeguard. A.E.C. .