Mr. Lachenman opens his letter with the question “Whose God do we want to include in our schools, courts and government?” He proceeds to mention the founding fathers. The God mentioned by the founding fathers is the God of Nature, Necessary Cause, Brahman, Prakriti, Allah, Javeh, and so forth. A common mistake made is assuming religion as something incompatible with other religions and therefore restrictively subjective. However, if one studies all religions, one would perceive to acknowledge that most religions are compatible with each other in explaining the universe and the ultimate reality. By doing so, all religions advocate morality whether it derives from God’s command, Jesus’ life, or a reincarnation from karma. Jainism for example does not recognize the God of Love but does nonetheless proceed to stress the importance of exercising common values and virtues such as nonviolence, nontheft, and sexual purity.

In recent years we have seen a large decline of morality in our society including exploding divorce rates, alcoholism, drug dependence, debauchery, promiscuity, epidemics of STDs, juvenile violence, etc., which correlate strongly with the libertarian crusade against religion in public schools and even in families. It is patent that STDs, drugs, and alcohol, severely hurt and disrupt society, and if the public domains do not advocate morality from religious sources in fear of political incorrectness, who will?

Another dangerous trend is the paradigm of scientism. If scientific reductionism of, say, religious experience, love, and emotions, are taught to be reduced to electrochemical brain activity, and if Darwin is not opposed by criticism, are we not then dogmatically professing modern philosophy? The point is that if you arrive at the conclusion that science is the only knowledge-yielding enterprise and that religion should be reserved for the private individual as a less meaningful doctrine for society, then religion will be forgotten. There is a clear example of what is going on today where media and society condone divorce and cohabitation as good family values: What society ends up with are broken families and children prone to drugs, promiscuity, violence, and crime.

Although I disagree with Mr. Lachenman’s attitude towards religion in society, I am inclined to agree that America must not come to preserve historic Christian bigotry. The answer to Mr. Lachenman’s first question is that everyone’s God should be included in the public domain because it reflects public interest. It is egregious to sanitize all religious philosophy from the public domains. Instead, place equal emphasis on major religions and convey their teachings of morality. If not, then we are bound to continue this cultural suicide.

Fredrik Persson

Sophomore

Psychology, philosophy, history major