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Tuesday, June 01, 1999 Page:
Contends moral behavior and belief in God are not mutually dependent
I am somewhat upset and amused at the same time. On May 18, Else Sayles of
Tunkhannock in a letter commenting on a Steve Corbett column, asks “Who
are these people” who don’t seek meaning in God or the soul? She also asks
why someone with morals would object to someone who needs to pray. I am
amused,
because it is obvious she has no concept of “agnostic” or “atheist,” or
if she does, she believes that people who fall into those categories are rareI
am one of those people, and so is just about every one of my closest friends.
An even larger number of friends and acquaintances are people who pay lip
service to a higher deity, yet do not live their lives as if they believe it-
a hypocrisy which I find much more offensive than non-belief.
I have also met a large number of people who take their worship seriously,
whether they are Christian, Wiccan or even Satanists (while he was a scary
fellow, whom I only spoke to once, he definitely believed what he told me).
I do not seek God for meaning in my life. While I do not deny the existence
of a higher power, I have too many questions and doubts for me to truly
believe in such a being.
Does that mean I have no morals or standards? On the contrary, I think that
Ms. Sayles would find me to be a person of intense moral self-examination. It
comes with maturity- knowing what is proper and what is dangerous and
childish.
This has nothing to do with God, or Allah, or Buddha, or any other widely
accepted and worshipped deity. No, I try to think how I would like to be
treated by people and try to act that way toward them. If more people would
take the two seconds to think how they would like to be treated if the roles
were reversed in any given interaction with another human being, perhaps the
world would be a much better place.
I am upset, because she implies that intellect is in no way important, or
at least is less important than religion. I am all for people being
spiritually at peace with themselves, and I show nothing but the utmost
respect for religious leaders and houses of worship.
However, people like her who put religion above all else in life are always
in danger of becoming zealots.
Perhaps the most distressing part of her letter was her refusal to believe
that our history has incidents of zealotry. Perhaps the memory of millions
upon millions of slaughtered Native Americans will remind her. Many of them
were killed by French, English, Dutch, and Spanish missionaries who felt it
was their “divine right” to convert these so-called savages into Christians so
that they would be allowed into heaven. Their total disregard for a belief
system that they did not understand, and which was probably older than
Christianity, was zealotry on a par with the Crusades and the Spanish
Inquisition.
You can believe whatever you want, you can even preach whatever you want. I
can respect that.
To deny that many of us don’t particularly need or want your God, though,
is just ignorance.
Jared Rivera
Wilkes-Barre