Reading some letters

Our home-town newspaper, North County Times, has a section for religious issues. As part of this, the paper allows both religious and nonreligious people to write letters. As an aside, I find it interesting that the editors think they must separate such letters from the regular opinion page, suggesting there’s something different about religious issues that don’t qualify them for general consumption. Religious issues need to be part of a ghetto in the back of the paper.

I usually read these letters, especially the ones from nonbelievers to see what their complaints are about people of faith. One recent letter took exception with Tim LaHaye’s view of end-times prophecies. Here are the letter’s comments: “Nonreligious people do not fear any end times; they fear those people who, in the 21st century, still believe in myths generated thousands of years ago. Islamic fanatics blowup themselves, and innocent bystanders, believing that they will be instantly transported to Paradise forever. A born-again Christian world leader rushes into war, believing that if it goes really badly and ends in Armageddon, the rapture will waft him and the other faithful up to heaven (to live side-by-sided with martyred jihadists for eternity?).”

Notice several things going on here. First, the author fears religious people more than the nonreligious. I wonder how he explains the horrors of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao—all nonreligious individuals. Far more death and destruction has come from the secular world than from the religious. Secondly, he equates Islamic fanatics with Christian believers. Hey, after all, they are all the same, aren’t they? How’s that for a failure to note distinctions?

Another writer refers to the return of Christ, who comes with “a promise of a non-fleshly paradise (what, no 72 virgins?) as long as they keep filling their pews, feeding the tithe coffers, and nodding their pointed little heads in abject agreement… does that mean that those who mentally cannot understand the concept of their godly fantasies will be “left behind” to suffer with the rest of us filthy, rotten atheists who like to help people in this real life?” What would you say to this writer? One thing that struck me was his comments about atheists helping people in this world. Isn’t he aware of how much good religious people have done – education, health care, orphanages, poverty relief, AIDS clinics, literacy groups, etc.? What atheist group has reached out to the weaker members of our world? It’s thanks to Christianity in particular that the writer enjoys the fruits of science, has civil liberties, and partakes in capitalism. We shouldn’t be taken in by those who demean the role religion has played in making our lives safer, more valuable, and more noble.