To the editor:
With all due respect, I have to disagree with Mr. Boylan’s piece on religion, “Respect for others religions.” The central arguments laid out in the article were surprisingly shallow, and quite misinformed. The genesis for the piece is a section found in most syllabi on campus: the part about respecting other religions, worldviews and opinions. Boylan went on to assert that, 1) religion is blindly respected and followed, 2) that religiosity should be marginalized as harmful to society and 3) that there is insufficient merit to find religion worthy of respect.
The criterions for these premises are coming from an arrogant lack of empathy, and an inability to think outside of a secular box. What makes something worthy of merit? Is it consensus? This cannot be the sole argument for respecting something, but certainly the 217,872,000 Christians, 3,702,400 Jews, 2,400,000 Buddhists and 1,424,000 Muslims should make us stop and think that religion is worthy of respect.
Is longevity a criterion? If a tradition lasts for thousands upon thousands of years under scrutiny, time, fads and the fickle nature of humanity, then is it worthy of respect? What about the effects of religion upon the world? Consider the recent disaster in Haiti, and the outpouring of Christian relief efforts including money, resources and, for what it’s worth, prayer. How many nongovernment atheistic relief groups are there?
Perhaps religion is not so unworthy of respect, and perhaps you just haven’t looked hard enough yet.
Aaron Telloian
To the editor:
It seems outrageous to me that Multicultural/International (MI) requirements at Fresno State are being taken into consideration. California is celebrated for its multiculturalism, and as a country, we willingly celebrate things like Cinco de Mayo and Thanksgiving without having any historical knowledge of these events.
Multicultural courses should be required not omitted, especially here in Fresno where ethnic minorities make up almost half of the student population. If we don’t enforce a better understanding of different cultures, then we will never achieve tolerance and ignorance will continue to reign. If we are not learning about diversity and other countries, then we are solely learning white culture. White culture is unseen, but has influenced the way we perceive the world. If we don’t know anything other than what the dominant culture is teaching us then we are losing out on knowledge and power.
I am a liberal studies major, and I cannot imagine not having any type of diversity understanding. If we eliminate these courses on campus, we are depriving future generations of knowledge and understanding of their own cultures and history. Learning about diversity is crucial in order to help reach students who feel misunderstood, misrepresented or underappreciated. Diversity also informs students that life is not black or white, wrong or right.
Take these classes into consideration! Are you kidding me? What’s next, women studies, Chicano Latino studies, Asian-American studies or African-American studies? This sounds like discrimination to me.
Lydia Alvarez
joshua4234 • Feb 10, 2010 at 10:36 am
1) Religion is blindly accepted BY SOME. Not everyone does, of course, but if a religion is not blindly accepted I don't understand how there could be so many catholics when it has been adequately demonstrated that the Catholic church harbors pedophiles that molest children then shuffles them to different churches so they don't get caught and charged with crimes. Unless, of course, they agree with the church's actions, they are just blindly following Catholicism.
2) Certain ideas under the guise of the word 'religion' should be marginalized. Certainly Aaron Telloian does not think women should submit to their husbands and be treated as a step lower than men, well maybe he does I don't know, so then would he have to treat the Southern Baptists ideas about the place of women with respect simply because it's part of their religion? Former President Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptists because of these ideas, these are the types of actions we mean by marginalize harmful religiosity. We can make the case about what we think is harmful religiosity later, but that's the kind of thing we mean.
3) Religions have to earn there merit by demonstrating it. No, shear numbers of people don't make me think it's worthy of respect. Hardly any of those people were convinced by argument to be religious, they were raised to be religious and most of their family or culture around them is religious. Find me an educated person who grew up to the age of mid twenties without going to church or being pressured by family to be religious, then if something convinces them that a religion is true it's at least worth investigating to see what happened. And no again, the time a religion lasts has nothing to do with it's merit either, the Egyptian religions lasted for a very long time, but makes them no more worthy of respect if their ideas are terrible or unfounded. And this last part was down right dirty and ignorant. The non-religious also care a lot about helping people in Haiti, but it just turns out that they are a significantly smaller segment of the population than christians, have less infrastructure to funnel funds through like churches, and have almost no incentive to create 'atheist' groups to preach a message of atheism along with helping people and just donate to secular groups just worried about actually helping people instead of preaching a message like Doctors without Borders and the red cross. People who make ignorant accusations or implications that the non-religious are somehow less concerned about the well being of their fellow man infuriate me.