A Refusal to Deny the Obvious

Sufia Khalid’s Tuesday editorial describes the merits of criticizing established authority despite the tendency for politics to produce an “us versus them” mentality. I will not deny the truth in this argument, but I have a better example of the “follow the leader” syndrome then politics: organized religion. Coincidently a day later, the Daily Free Press publishes a short story on how BU students are looking for more religion/spirituality while here at college. Religion in all its guises encourages the individual to suspend skepticism and just respectfully accept the dogma handed to him. How can this be seen as a positive value in society, let alone at an institute of higher learning founded upon the Enlightenment principle of critical reasoning? One demands of science and the humanities evidence to validate suppositions and theories, but to make the same demand of theology would bring howls of protest from otherwise rational people. Scant contemporaneous evidence exists to confirm the existence and actions of Jesus, but Christianity flourishes across the globe. Discoveries of early drafts of the Koran place the Islamic holy book in a historical context, though Muslim’s continue to believe it is the inerrant word of Allah. The power of religion is that the true believer is able to look past all this and still say, “I believe.” Why does society still value this childlike naivety? Most religious individuals practice the faith they had been brought up into by their parents so it’s the thing they have always done. They cannot picture their lives any other way. Faith in the divine also grounds an individuals psyche in a group of purported universal truths, providing a sense of stability in a rather unstable world. So religion is a sociological phenomenon providing a psychological need for unquestionable certainty and social acceptance. To paraphrase the renowned atheist, Prof. Dawkins, we all are atheists in terms of most of history’s deities; it is just the atheist who wishes to take it one step further. I am perfectly at ease stating there is no God, and as a reminder, the burden of proof otherwise remains on the shoulders of the faithful. Faith should not be a moral or academic virtue in a place of learning like Boston University.

Matthew West CAS 2006 [email protected] 617-548-9072