LETTERS to the editor.

The Purpose of Religion

Larry Gray's article, "To Bind Again" ("Creative Controversy," March/April 2001), on the concept of religion for humanists, prompted me to assemble these thoughts.

I had the good fortune, back around 1940, to take a couple of courses from Humanist Professor Eustace Haydon in the Department of Comparative Religion at the University of Chicago. Haydon defined religion as the "social quest for the values of the good life"--that is, people working together to find ways of living more satisfactorily together. In this view, religion is the glue that enables human societies to function.

The various religious traditions contain greater or lesser elements of this humanism in a mixture with other components centered around gods and hereafters. In some religious bodies, humanism is the dominant part of their teaching and practice. In others it is miniscule. Moreover, many social institutions that we don't generally classify as religious--such as trade unions, professional societies, consumer cooperatives, cohousing communities, other community organizations--qualify under Haydon's definition.

Innumerable news stories, as well as letters to the editor everywhere, furnish vivid examples of the tension between these contrasting emphases in religion. Meanwhile, numerous non-church associations continue quietly to do much of the nitty-gritty work of building community all over the country.

Seymour Meyerson Asheville, NC

The March/April 2001 Humanist was notable in two ways: first, for Barbara Dority's discouraging but informative article on our electoral process; and second, for Larry Gray's opinions that religious impulses are "basically healthy in their origins" and that religions have done "much to advance and stabilize past and present civilizations."

Perhaps Gray is enamored with religion's (Christianity in particular) white-washed past. But contrary to his assertions, religion--at its origin--asks us to accept wild fantasies for which there is no evidence; and when religion has "advanced" a civilization, it has usually done so by restricting dissent, education, and liberty. A more realistic assessment is that religion has "stabilized" even the most despotic regimes, preserving the status quo with repression and intolerance, and has been, on balance, a disabling plague on the human race. I, too, like to dream. But let's dream of equality, education and kindness and reject childish fantasies that have no test in reality.

George Erickson New brighton, MN

Another Lesson in Living

One lesson Kathleen Antonia ("A Lesson Before Living," March/April 2001) has apparently not learned is the lesson of prosecution. It's been said that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. The sad reality that the United States is learning in the wake of death-penalty moratoriums and DNA-tested innocent convicts released from prison is that whomever a grand jury can indict, a competent prosecutor can likely convict. The contest in U.S. Courtrooms is about winning or losing; guilt and innocence are ancillary issues. Truth is the real victim.

So when enlightened progressives like Antonia express the prejudice that convicted people she hasn't interviewed, investigated, or followed through a complete trial are "probably guilty," she helps us all to understand just how safe our own bigotry makes us feel. After all, it isn't a comfortable idea in the land of the free to face the prospect of jailed innocents who have simply lost a game.

In the end, the innocent of us behind bars recognize one irrefutable truth about the law: the only fact drawn from a conviction is that the individual was 100 percent convicted. That is, of course, unless the conviction is subsequently reversed.

Wyatt W. Bumgardner Lebanon Correctional Institution Lebanon, OH