To the Editor:
Charles M. Blow uses a tired straw-man argument when he portrays the nonreligious as cold and ignorant of the human need for the warmth and fellowship religious services provide. Many who eschew religion acknowledge those desires in themselves and find solace in literature, philosophy, the beauty of the natural world as revealed by science, and the company of other nonbelievers.
Organizations like the American Humanist Association offer opportunities for nonbelievers to connect and achieve a sense of community.
It’s likely that nothing will match the reassurance of a Sunday morning spent in church. But for an ever-growing number of Americans, the conviction that the church is built on shaky philosophical grounds is more powerful than the longing for unconditional comfort.
Joanna Mang
Carlsbad, Calif., May 2, 2009
To the Editor:
“Science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious”? I don’t think so. Logic and reason continue to bring many to faith—the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition is not dead—and as for science, no less a physicist than Andrei Sakharov affirmed that “for me God is . . . the guarantor of the meaning of existence—despite all the apparent meaninglessness.”
Bruce M. Shipman
Groton, Conn., May 2, 2009
The writer is an Episcopal priest.
