Dwindling church attendance has nothing to do with the lack of ethics in this country - Yorkshire Post Letters

Canon Michael Storey ('Ethical dilemma', Letters, TYP, June 8) repeats the common error that ethics depend on religion and specifically on church attendance.

Oddly, he seeks to imply that the English were more moral in the reign of Elizabeth I than in her father's generation, or indeed than today's generation, simply because she made an order that everyone attend church on Sundays or suffer a fine.

It can be better argued that religions themselves are based upon pre-existing ethics or morality. Whilst the Canon speaks for Christianity, it is evident that all major religions came to be based on standards of morality developed by communities over the millennia before the various religions were invented.

The simple evidence for this is that all major religions depend on one basic ethic - the golden rule of 'do unto others as you would be done by'. This is their big selling point: that religion promises fairness for the individual - guaranteed by a god.

In the bible, Jesus is reported as saying this in Matthew 7:12, adding 'for this is the law of the prophets'. Christian reference to the prophets and the Ten Commandments is of course just plain 'borrowing' from another major religion - Judaism. Moses is thought to have received the tablets around 1,500 years before the birth of Jesus.

According to Hadith, the Prophet Mohammed is reported 'Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others, what you wish for yourself'.

Zoroastrianism is the oldest religion and asserts 'do not do unto others what is injurious to yourself'.

Whether or not 'this country's ethics are at such a low ebb' might be debatable, but it has precious little to do with church attendance.