I suppose Matthew West would have Boston University do away with its motto, “Learning, Virtue, Piety.” Heedless of the university’s origins as a school of theological instruction, he declared in his letter, “Faith should not be a moral or academic virtue in a place of learning like Boston University” (“Religion encourages us to accept dogma,” March 17, p. 6). Must we suffer once more the shibboleth that faith and reason are incompatible?

West writes, “Religion in all its guises encourages the individual to suspend skepticism and just respectfully accept the dogma handed to him.” Respectfully, I disagree. One may propose with the psychologist Erich Fromm that there are authoritarian forms of religion, distinguished chiefly by the surrender to a sovereign power demanding strict, unthinking obedience; and humanistic forms of religion, distinguished chiefly by the development of reason for the purposes of discovering truth, learning to love and becoming perfectly united with the All. I suspect West writes in protest of the former. Indeed, we are witnessing far too much of the authoritarian kind of religion these days — whether theistic, non-theistic or secular. However, humanistic religion, which also cuts across all manner of faiths, is alive and well at Boston University and all other respectable institutions of higher learning.

A confirmed atheist, West says religion is “a sociological phenomenon filling a psychological need for unquestionable certainty and social acceptance.” I have no problem with this statement. Among many others, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud have developed this line of thought, and I invite West to read their works. At the same time, I would say religion is not merely reducible to a projection, a symptom of social ills or an obsessive neurosis. There is something more, something positive — something authentic and even mysterious — underlying every genuine experience associated with religion. William James argued persuasively that each believer’s spiritual testimony, rooted in some experience, has its own incontestable validity, yet here we are, over 100 years after the publication of The Varieties of Religious Experience, still disputing the admissibility of such as “evidence” that religion may in fact point to a reality beyond the world itself.

Now, West is entitled to his opinions, but I am disturbed by his caricature of the contemporary practice of theology: “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.” Has he never read Kant? It’s a shame how apparently little he esteems the modern study of theology. To respond in full is beyond the scope of this letter. I call upon my fellow students and my professors at the School of Theology, who are wonderfully humane, faith-filled and utterly rational people, to engage West and The Daily Free Press. (I assure you, they don’t howl.) More generally, I call upon all women and men of religion, and people of good will who subscribe to no religion, to challenge West’s weakly defended assertions.

Anthony Zuba STH ’08