Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Letter: Refreshing to hear leaders’ faith talks
Monday 2nd January 2012, 7:55AM GMT.
Our leaders speak out for Christian faith and principles. Many readers of this newspaper will have been pleased to hear the Queen speak out about her Christian faith, the need for forgiveness and the positive effect that believing in Jesus and His principles can make.
Our Prime Minister too has recognised the need for getting back to Christian standards and principles and the good work that is being done by many Christians all over the UK.
The words of these two leaders have been encouraging in that they recognise the invaluable voluntary work that is being done by thousands of people all over Britain. Most of it does not hit the headlines. Many are giving their time sacrificially to help children, parents, senior citizens, homeless people and people with learning disabilities and mental health problems.
Financially, many are giving generously to support a whole variety of works. Without this regular commitment most of the work would not survive. In spite of the economic gloom that pervades at the present time, it has also been reported that people in the UK are the fifth most generous country in the world!
As we enter a new year with many uncertainties ahead of us, it is my fervent hope that we will continue with all the endeavours of the past years and that in 2012 many more will take a leaf out of the Queen’s new year message and seek to live out the teachings of the Bible and be unafraid and unashamed to believe the good news that Jesus Christ’s birth brings – that He is the saviour of the world.
If we do this, then truly our families, neighbourhoods and country will all be better places.
Roy Whittall
Shrewsbury
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You can if you like Roy, I will stick with reality. I gave up reading comics years ago.
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Atheists do voluntary work too.
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Exactly GB – and not all those who call themselves Christians give their time or money to help others.
It’s not what label you give yourself, it’s your actions that count.
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Agreed. It’s arrogant to make the assumption that you require Christian beliefs as a foundation or motive for doing good deeds. I know plenty of people who prefer provable science to unprovable comic books and fairy stories and are entirely unencumbered by religious doctrine, yet who are throughly decent and helpful members of society. Conversely I know some Christians who are total wastes of a skin and who would steal bread from a beggar.
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I have no problem with people believing what they want, but i do dislike insinuation that by being atheist, i must not have any morals.
I give time and money to help charities, just becasue i want to, not becasue a god tells me i should, or risk damnation.
I do it just becasue i want to help, i don’t need the carrot of heaven or stick of hell to make me a moral person!
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She sits there surrounded by excessive wealth and talks about Christian values. What a hypocrite.
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Agreed. Beliefs, be they religious or political,are the choice of the individual.The letters pages of newspapers are for matters con which can affect the lives of readers,not as soapboxes for bible bashers and tub thumpers .
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Kindly remove the graven image of the graven image accompanying this story.
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Check out the annual report of the Church Commissioners, the moneybags who administer the vast investment portfolio of the “Church” of England.
Those cross-dressing cranks are sitting on a realisable fortune of circa £4 billion, excluding land and property.
Much of the Church”s cash is sunk into investments of deeply dubious ethical merit.
For many years, the Commissioners were investing heavily in the arms industry. War was damn good for the “Church” and its fork-tongued bishops.
It was only after years of intense criticism that the “Church” was forced into flogging off its stock in missile manufacturers, landmine makers. It finally had to admit that those trades are not ethical “Christian” investments, after all. Fancy that!
Today, the “Church”, and its slithery partners in the City are abusing its considerable financial might for all manner of shenanigans.
The “Church” is routinely involved in currency manipulation, for example. This practice the “Church” dresses up as beneficial to the United Kingdom. It being done to “smooth out” the currency fluctuations in the market. Or, at least, that’s what the Church would have its flock believe.
There are none so blind that will not see!
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“It finally had to admit that those trades are not ethical “Christian” investments, after all. Fancy that!”
Crusaders (armed with swords)… Sending forces to the Middle East (armed with missiles)… it’s a fine line!
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“Crusaders (armed with swords)… Sending forces to the Middle East (armed with missiles)… it’s a fine line!”
The British are coming! The British are coming!
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I say nationalise the church like we did back in the 1500s and distribute that money to the UK’s very own poor and needy! When did a poor person last turn up at a church or monastery and be given a meal and a bed for the night?
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I see Mr. Whitall has not responded to any of the above posts, all opposing his views. How committed is he then?
I challenge anyone from the god squad,(lower case deliberate), to offer me just ONE piece of evidence to support their claims that this god ever existed. There is ample visible evidence to support the theory of evolution, but god????
I await a convincing reply. Are there no vicars out there who are willing to go in to bat for their almighty saviour? Is he not worth the effort?
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Perhaps he doesnt have access to the internet, or read the Shropshire Star on line?
His, is a letter printed in the paper rather than an on-line post.
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well I would say that creation of the universe is a pretty good piece of evidence! Personally I think it requires a bigger leap of faith to belive in a big bang than that God created the universe.
If the bible is such a comic as earlier correspondents claim, I wonder why the church I belong to includes (as well as the usual cross-section of society)2 hospital consultants, a judge, GPs, solicitors and a very well-respected geologist, and other intelligent people who could not be accused of ignoring evidence in their professional lives?
Entering into a relationship with God was the best thing I have done in my life, and I’m sorry that many don’t want to see what God can offer them.
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So despite the fact (and I use the word fact advisedly) that through science we know how the universe came to be down to the last few milliseconds and the tiniest of particles, you prefer to believe that an imaginary, omnipotent friend in the sky did it all instead.
You use the entirely bogus phrase ‘a relationship with God’ – yet this relationship is based upon no more of a real relationship than my children’s relationship with Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.
You have one heavily-edited and politicised book, and numerous factions of belief in that book – all of which assure us that theirs is the true belief. Have you ever really considered the wealth of hard evidence to cast doubt upon this God of yours or any other God? Can you not see that you and the rest of your congregation are most likely deluding yourselves?
The letter writer is so deluded and arrogant as to assign common human values and morality to the ownership of a God – yet you will find these values are held in common with people of all faiths and none – many of whom will have had little or no exposure to this man-made ‘God’ of yours.
How dare Mr Whittall see fit to assign ownership of my morality to his ‘God’? What right do you or he have to foist your religion on the rest of us?
We are obliged by law to tolerate your religion – why can you not tolerate our far more rational atheism? Instead we see our lives dictated to in all sorts of ways by your archaic and superstitious beliefs – be that Sunday opening, Bishops in the House of Lords, the imposition of religious gatherings, or even of so-called ‘faith’ schools upon our children.
Believe in your deities if you must, but please stop seeking to oppress those of us who have taken the entirely logical step, supported by fact rather than myth, to do otherwise.
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Detailed reponse, Peter, but are you and others prepared to accept that you too might be deluding yourself?
Science hasn’t got all the answers either – Einstein reckoned that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light, but recently it appears that this is now not the case from experiments in Switzerland – so a central plank of physics which has been held to be true for decades might in fact not be the case.
Even if at the point of my death, I have been wrong, and there is nothing else, I would still consider that a life lived trying to follow Jesus, was better than not doing so.
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@Richard:
I think you misunderstand science. ‘Science’ never claimed to have all the answers and never will.
An important tenet of the scientific method is that a theory cannot be proved, only disproved. While a working theoretical model may exist for a long period of time, another may eventually emerge that disproves it. The current activity surrounding neutrinos possibly travelling faster than light is a great example of this and the scientific community is very excited by the fact that E may not equal mc squared. Everyone loves a revolution, but in the mean time E=mc² has allowed us to achieve things that were unimaginable only a few decades ago.
That’s one of the beauties of science; challenges are welcomed because that’s how progress is made and knowledge is strengthened.
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Richard,
Your response deliberately seeks to misrepresent the position of science in respect of truth.
Scientists will always reflect facts in their search for truth. If it turns out that certain particles can exceed the speed of light they will without doubt look again at Einstein’s thoeries. For now, they are seeking to establish that what was recently observed is repeatable and was correctly observed – without any errors in the complexity of these highly intricate experiments.
But the point is that science is honest enough to change its views in the light of hard factual evidence.
Compare that to the attitude of religious folk. You have no hard evidence at all to support the existence of your God. Despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, you insist that there must have been a creator ‘being’ to create the Universe – but who’s to say it didn’t just happen? If you cannot accept that things don’t necessarily need a creator – where does that leave your fantasy of a creator God? Who or what created him?
There are some interesting theories, based upon what we know of matter, dark matter and black holes, being put forward about the nature of the universe (or unverses) and what happened before the big bang – none of these theories involve a creator being I’m afraid.
Instead of taking account of the lack of evidence for your or any God
you simply make stuff up to support your weak argument. You claim to have ‘ a relationship’ with your god – if so it is an entirely imaginary and/or delusional one – you cannot see him, you cannot hold an conversation with him – he exists only in your mind!
Doubtless you would pour scorn upon the primitive beliefs of the ancient Romans or Egyptians, and their many gods based upon the sun, nature etc., but in truth, their gods were no more fanciful than yours. Yours, like all faiths, is a blind and empty one, held in total and purposeful denial of all facts.
Continue with your delusion if you must, and if it makes you feel better, but please, don’t confuse it with facts or an association with the real world around us.
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The creation of the Universe was an event, not evidence. There are theories about the cause of the event and evidence is the observable, measurable and repeatable stuff that’s used to support theories to give them credibility. There are currently two popular theories on the creation of the universe and one of them is supported by a great deal of evidence.
I hope that’s cleared up any confusion.
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You mean Big Bang? There is indeed evidence pointing to a Big Bang, but Big Bang does not explain the “creation” of the universe, only it’s development from that point to the current day.
There is zero evidence for how the universe was created, just unprovable theories. Sorry to be pedantic :)
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Julian, I wouldn’t expect anything less from you ;-)
You’re correct though. There isn’t any actual evidence pre-Big Bang, because the laws of nature don’t allow us to look back that far. The theories are a damn sight more sound – and consistent with scientific observations – than any alternative faith-based assumptions, though. I’m not a gambling man, but I know which I’d back in a two-horse race.
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Richard, just ordinary people from all walks of life that cannot get there heads around dying; preferring to belive they shoot off to somewhere better as opposed to worm fodder.
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David Cameron’s god is money
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It would be quite heartwarming to think that all the churches of england and rome where bursting at the seams, but sadly they are empty people lost faith in late 70′s and 80′s when the i am alright sod you jack attitude was brought in to life by mrs thatcher and camerons big society is a sham as its only there to cover the cuts but they turn it in to christian values.
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As usual the dross from the anti, unpleasant christian brigade .
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I don’t quite get your meaning – are you talking about unpleasant people who are anti-christian, or people who are opposed to unpleasant christians?
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Judge not, that ye be not judged
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I am not anti-christian Karl Marx once said”Religion is the opium of the people” i for one don’t prescribe to any drugs but those that do should be left to their own will it’s freedom.
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Which branch of Christian principles and standards is David Cameron and HRH The Queen asking us to abide to ?
I assume it’s CoE. What with her being in charge and all that.
Catholics, Anabaptists, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants and the rest of you….it’s not like you believe in the same thing, so I guess you’ll just have to do without the official sanction.
Meanwhile, Anglicans rejoice!
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Whoooaaa – let’s hold it with the religion bashing! I’m not for or against religion of any kind. If it helps and comforts some people, so be it. As for “proof” I think the clue may be in the word “faith”. You don’t require “proof” because you have “faith”.
What I object to is people trying to tell me that Christians are the most decent,caring and moral people. Like I said before, it’s actions not labels that count.
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“As for “proof” I think the clue may be in the word “faith”. You don’t require “proof” because you have “faith”.”
Quite so. But in that case, please do not try and convince me or anyone else that your faith/belief is factually based or in any sense ‘true’.
As far as I am concerned people are welcome to believe/have faith that the moon is made of green cheese – provided they accept that my contrary view is at least as valid.
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Kath a christian may well tell you what he believes, if you do not wish to hear on a personal 1-1 level say so to the person speaking to you .
The problem is atheists etc seem to get annoyed or frustrated at another opinion on the grounds they do not agree with it and wish the religious type would not say anything to anyone , freedom of speech applies to Christians as well .
I would also add living a pure non promiscuous life should be applauded if it was then perhaps the uk would not have so many single parents, divorced couples etc etc .
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“Our Prime Minister too has recognised the need for getting back to Christian standards”
What is Christian about looking after the rich and screwing the poor?
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im disgusted when any politian talks god, its not on, it should not be discussed as part of national policy, we are not iran/usa (thankfully) and we must keep it that way
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yes it should,
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No it shouldn’t.
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He’s behind you.
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So anyone who is a single parent ( excluding blokes I presume) or is divorced is promiscuous?
Is religion basically a control for sexuality then ?
Religion has never proved itself honest or successful regarding people’s sexuality so why not just see humans as intelligent, reproductive creatures who complicate the whole mating business into something it really does not merit.
Of course it is the power struggle that we generally tend to sucuumb to which status, wealth, food and sex all contribute.
David Cameron has the wealth and status bit sorted for himself now he just needs to find a method of controlling other aspects of his minions lives.
BTW I do not consider myself an Atheist just a person oh Lord.
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“So anyone who is a single parent ( excluding blokes I presume) or is divorced is promiscuous”
no not at all, but one of the party usually is combined with teenage single mothers who have a case to answer, as do the fathers of these unfortunates .
A clean moral upbringing acknowledging christian views is a good thing.
IT is individuals within religious sectors who on occasion abuse that trust , and as such those individuals are responsible for their own actions and any one who is complicit in covering up anything illegal should also be held accountable .
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“A clean moral upbringing acknowledging christian views is a good thing.”
A clean moral upbringing is a good thing.
Acknowledging Christian views is optional and I think that’s at the heart of the gripe non-christians have with this whole argument: the assertion that somehow morality ‘belongs’ to Christianity and that those who subscribe to Christian views automatically regard themselves as morally superior.
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Moral up bring ok with out being a christian but great with i say it is non Christians who have the issues being they think we are moralizing, not that we are just putting our point across with out ridicule.
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Spot on Eve its a power struggle in many of the Worlds religious faiths and in my view the extremist views will always be wrong but the general view that we should all live fair and good lives is correct and we do not need religion for that.
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Possibly not mike, but many desire certain religious faiths to assist them to lead a good/clean living life.
for that they should be free to live and express their views on that with out ridicule or persecution .
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Are you really The Lord*? If so, kindly show yourself and prove my fellow unbelievers and me wrong. If not, is the choice of your screen name not a little blasphemous?
* Or are you perhaps a temporal Lord, such as… oooh, I dunno… Lord Lloyd Webber?
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Good points
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