God, History and Cartoons
My 3 cents, for what they’re worth:
1:1 agree with the opinion expressed in Scott
Phillips’ letter (DN, Friday) concerning the over
whelming number of published religious, or non
religious, convictions. The arguments have grown
stale and trite and, as a result, so has your opinion
page.
2:1 anticipate a column from one of your witty
columnists on Tuesday breaking a big story on the
“true historical context of Thanksgiving,” and I
cringe.
I believe we, as readers, understand that histo
ry can sometimes lie - and we are fine with that.
I, for one, am not really going home over vaca
tion because of my appreciation of English
Puritans. I suggest you entertain us with a story we
didn’t read last year.
3: Planarian Man sucks.
Zach Schomburg
graduate student
English
The Science of God
To Mr. Glazeski (Letters, Thursday), who
pointed out that God must not exist because there
are so many contradictory ideas about him.
I would like to offer a counter-example. Jake
said that religion can be discredited because so
many different religions around the world dis
agree.
He also said science is perfect
because the same results have been found around
the world and at different times.
Well, once upon a time in ancient Babylonia,
the year was defined to have 360 days.
Later, the people of ancient Greece found the
year to contain 354 days. The Romans, on the
other hand, came up with a year with 355 days.
Of course, today we say a year has 365 days.
So, because a few different cultures came up with
a few different definitions for a planet-wide con
stant, does that mean the yeardoesn’t exist?
- All through school I have learned till kinds of
laws of classical physics that have been proven
basically wrong in more recent years because of
the advent of modem physics and relativity.
,ri! iSd, does that mean physics doesn’t exist
either?
Since Jake seems to be smarter than all of the
faith believers who are “far less intelligent” than
himself, perhaps he will counter by saying “Ahh,
but the basic idea of physics has remained the
same, and the year is a confusing subject that has
taken this long to define.”
Have you stopped to use that intelligence to
realize that perhaps religion is the same way?
Different cultures arise out of different circum
stances and in a variety of geographic areas,
meaning religion will depend on the environment
just as die year depended on planting times and
physics depends on constants here on Earth.
But just as physics became more general as
knowledge became more available, so can reli
gion. _
Perhaps with the ease of communication these
days we can create a sort of Grand Unification
Theory of religion that will be just as valid as the
one they are working on in the sciences
Then who will have the ultimate intelligence,
the believers or the non-believers?
Cory Lueninghoener
junior
computer science
Mr. Glazeski
I also haven’t found a reason to put my faith in
a higher power. I agree with all your views on why
not to believe in one such being.
Along with not believing in a higher power, I
also don’t understand why people have to bash on
religion.
How can something that brings so many peo
ple hope and joy be bad?
Even if religion is just a “Social construct used
to facilitate social conditioning,” what’s wrong
with that? I couldn’t think of any better form of
conditioning that can teach moral principles to so
many people in so many diverse cultures.
I don’t have any problem with people just
walking around loving one another and loving life,
but some people obviously do.
Levi Bauer
sophomore
economics
Glazeski Again
Somehow, I find Mr. Glazeski’s letter humor
ous. He claims, “There are several objectively
observable truths why Christianity (or any othei
religion that purports to be ‘true’) is ‘wrong.’”
First of all, I fail to
see where he is being objec
tive in his argument. I see a defi
nite bias, which is his right, to claim that
he is right and someone else is wrong (many
others, actually). We’re all mostly subjective, in
truth.
As for the question of why an omniscient and
omnipotent God would create a world understand
able by the “far less intelligent” people... why not?
But that’s not my point. I’m quite sure that
there have been more than a few extreme intellec
tuals who have accepted the truth of a God and His
plan for man - take C.S. Lewis for example.
I guess Mr. Glazeski puts it best when he says
in regards to viewing life in terms of good vs. evil,
God vs. devil ... “you must ignore a vast
continuum of circumstances that don’t directly
pertain to your world view.”
That’s just it. Maybe it does pertain to my
world view, just not yours.
Then if I say you’re wrong, and you say I’m
wrong ... well, neither of us is right then, (see
above)
The whole point of my response is this: Don’t
claim to be objective. We all approach the same
“facts” from different angles. When it comes to
beliefs, we pick and choose.
Samuel Hart
junior
computer engineering
Eyes Glazeski’d Over
Mr. Glazeski, you are an idiot, and
because I believe you are too stupid (or smart) to
realize why, I will be glad to enlighten you.
For your “objectively observable reasons”
why there is no God; I would have thought a math
major would know about physics. Not only is
objectivity a widely discarded philosophical con
cept, it is also impossible.
Ever heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle? It is impossible to pull the observer
away from the observed without changing the
observation.
Mr. Schrodinger (a founding fatter of quan
tum mechanics) goes so far as to say that a shift in
the observer’s “attention” can have real conse
quences in the physical world.
Objectivity, the disconnected scientific head
that floats over all creation, is a myth.
I will answer your next question. How can one
religion be right if others disagree? Maybe you
have forgotten that Newton’s Laws of Physics, ace ci
incorrect! Relativity proves it.
But if I want to understand billiard balls, I
don’t ask Einstein because Newton is much sim
pler. In the same way, religion is an attempt to
understand a spiritual world that is much more
complex than the physical and much harder to
observe.
We use our religious ethics as a guide to the
truth, because it gives us good results.
Finally, as for your charge to “idealize reason
and rationality”; have you been here for die past
three centuries? Eva* heard of the enlightenment?
What do you think all this science and self
consuming materialism sprang from? It hasn’t
been that great either. What happens when reason
is almighty powerful is that it becomes a new god,
Dne that is worse in
some respects from the
Did one; at least the old one
had a heart.
The new god, reason, has been
responsible for more deaths than the evil
Christian God ever was. Remember WWI, WWII,
the precision Jew-killing machine of Hitler, the
Atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, spray
pesticides, the greenhouse effect, the hole in the
ozone layer; these are all consequences of our
heartless use of reason.
Joe Fraas
sophomore
English
Fundamentally Flawed
This week has seen a fascinating increase in
the number of people writing letters involving
religion to the Daily Nebraskan. This presumably
came about because of the overwhelming number
of religion-based opinion columns printed recent
ly
iu a M&Ifind to bp particularly humo^jj|^j|-^
ever, is the continuing trend among a surprising
number of college students to lean on the Bible as
some sort of argumentative aid.
Religious fundamentalism is not a problem I
would expect to encounter to such a high degree
among an educated populace. As a former
Christian, I am certainly not saying that religion
implies a lack of education; rather I am saying that
education should dissuade people, for instance,
from interpreting the Bible as a factual historical
document. It should also be noted that telling
someone that they are simply wrong because
that’s “the way it is” is absurd in any educated
debate. c
Theologians have previously spent thousands
of years attempting to formulate answers to the
Shawn Ballarin/DN
unanswerable questions of the universe,
but most of what they have decided remains
conjecture.
This is true of most other sciences as well;
however, with very little possibility of disproving
any religious maxims any time soon, there is con
sequently little hope of establishing new, better
hypotheses that would actually lead to some sort
of better understanding of theology ’s core issues.
What is worse is that average people are
entirely unaware of the ramifications of their reli
gious reasoning.
Most of the students writing religious
columns and/or letters seem to be merely repeat
ing something that someone else told them. I
would think that before someone informs the
entire student body of how some intricate detail of
their religious belief affects the world, they might
actually bother to research and learn enough about
Of the hundreds of students who have written
in to the Daily Nebraskan to tell us all what the
Bible says, I would finally venture to guess that
only half at most have ever even read a single page
of die Bible themselves.
This ignorance, coupled with the fact that
nearly 100 percent of religious arguments are
entirely dismissive of any opposing viewpoints,
has invalidated the stance of die fundamentalist so
much that they no longer have an ounce of credi
bility.
Dan Rempe
junior
computer science