Editor, The Smithfield Times:

Scientists have disagreements just like religionists do. Like Carl Sagan said, some astronomers don’t believe that an expanding universe is responsible for the Doppler shift. But scientists don’t kill each other over their disagreements while religionists are constantly killing each other over theirs.

That’s because science is based on reason, which is the ability to comprehend and think logically. So suppose we’re in a building with no windows and we’re arguing over whether it’s raining outside. If our lives are guided by reason we have a common frame of reference. So we’ll go outside and look and we’ll see that either it’s raining or it isn’t. And that settles the argument.

But what if our lives are guided by religious faith, which is a belief in the absence of evidence, and we’re having an argument over matters of faith. Then there’s no common frame of reference; there’s only my “true” faith and your “misguided” faith and there’s no way to settle that disagreement but by force. As Ayn Rand said, “If reason isn’t an option then force is the only alternative.”

So religionists can talk peace and love all day, but religion is the source of their conflict and violence and religious faith is the reason why.

 

Jim P. McAdaragh

Chesapeake