Dear Editor:

Brian Sklar's letter ["Society Needs Bibles" - January 6] is a
classroom exercise in shoddy thinking.

Responding to the assertion that we can be good without a god, Sklar
claims "this has been tried in a number of countries with disastrous
results".

Let's look at homicide rate as a proxy for "goodness".  Canada's rate
(1.81 per 100,000) is distinctly higher than many countries that are
largely secular, such as the Czech Republic (1.33) and Sweden (1.25).
So belief in a god cannot be a controlling factor for the goodness of a
society.

Sklar goes to say "Without biblical guidelines, countries such as
Russia descended into moral chaos."  But was pre-1914 Christian Russia
a moral paragon? Sklar has apparently never heard of the Massacre of
Novgorod or the word "pogrom". And now that Christianity is practiced
openly in Russia, has the country's moral tone improved?  Hardly.

Sklar claims that "[taking] out prayer and Bible readings and
instruction in moral behaviour" has caused "an increase in violence,
drug problems, teen pregnancy and defiance against authorities".

This is a good example of the "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy.  In
the US today, for example, the homicide rate has fallen back to the
rate it was in 1965.  Yet prayer and Bible readings have not returned.

No serious analyst of crime thinks an increase in the crime rate is
linked to changes in school policies about prayer.

Jeffrey Shallit
Kitchener, Ontario