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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 7. April, 17 1974

Why me, Lord?

Why me, Lord?

Dear Sir,

Peter Rotherham makes a 'Freudian slip' in his poorly researched answer to the letters of Auld and Franks. When he quite deceitfully claims the above mentioned writers "are reduced to mindlessly apologising for the outrages (!) which have been committed in the name of socialism by Stalin, Mao and company". He goes onto say that "large doses of blind faith are needed" in this most important field of political debate. He also says that faith only "stands in the way" in this field. These brave words are insufficient to convince the VUW Rationalist Society of Rotherha Ms. rejection of religious type thinking. His whole "argument" is nothing more than superstitious anticommunism, he simply laughs at the fact that he has been called "counter revolutionary", as if it were a ridiculous charge. In other words he has great (and blind) faith in the petty bourgeois prejudices of some sections of his student audience. Furthermore, Peter Rotherham has blind faith that all the specific points brought up against him by his critics—none, not one of which he answers—will have been forgotten by these same readers. Those of us in the VUW Rationalist Society who were originally reluctant to criticise the pro-religious leanings of Rotherham in our previous letters are now quite satisfied with that action. Peter Rotherham has fully exposed himself as a social-theist, that is—a socialist in words and a theist in deeds.

Susan Hampton

, VUW Rationalists