As president of the Student Atheists of Northeastern, I entitled the group with the acronym of SANE not to belittle the intelligence of religious students and faculty on campus nor to disrupt the acronymic scheme that Northeastern has apparently institutionalized, but to condense our organization’s large name in a way that would generate interest and bring awareness to our cause.
It is dishonest for anyone to ignorantly speak on behalf of our organization by manipulating a suggestion that religious belief may be erroneous and detrimental, into the strong statement that anyone who does believe is minimized into insanity, like in the Letter to the Editor in the Feb. 5 issue of The News, ‘SANE students made condescending acronym.’ There are many highly recognized individuals like Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project who have made great strides in the name of science who are also adamant believers in religion. However, it’s relevant to add the context that Collins’ religious views are contrary to 93 percent of people in the National Academy of Sciences and 70 percent of all US scientists. Although we question his religious beliefs and their implications, we in no way try to downplay his contributions to both science and the global community.
The worst religious atrocities are attributable to fundamentalists and extremists, but it is not just these groups whose ideologies are flawed and harmful. Religious moderation must also be questioned. The idea that beliefs are personal entities that can’t be rationally questioned balkanizes conversation by allowing the discussion of religion and faith to be exempt from the same rational discourse that occurs within mathematics, science or history. When belief coincides with politics, faith is allowed to trump honest, rational discussion on issues like stem cell research, gay rights and abortion. The underlying problem remains:’ When you allow freedom of belief and freedom from critical discourse, it is hard not to consistently allow the same liberties to fundamentalists or extremist ideology.
Maybe one reason moderates refuse to have their beliefs open to critique is because of the fundamental hypocrisy. For example, most moderates agree that the Bible is divinely inspired and true but that only certain parts are right. But how can one know without proclaiming divinity that the part about beating slaves (Luke 12:47-48; Exodus 21:20-2) is not Gods’ word and know that other parts still are?
Thomas Jefferson took all the miracles and claims of divinity out of the New Testament and republished it as the ‘The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.’ As Jefferson said, ‘In extracting the pure principles which [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off all the artificial vestments.’ By examining Jesus as a philosopher, there is no hypocrisy in picking and choosing from his teachings as moderates often do. This advances rational discussion of issues without using blind faith or believing in unproven magical claims and allows for fundamentalists to be questioned on the merits of their beliefs. This is a SANE way to look at religion.
If the argument then is not against group advocacy, then it is whether atheists really ‘need to join a club to talk about something (one doesn’t) think is real.’ To show how this statement is presumptuous, let’s consider the events leading up to the Iraq War. People, including the president, asserted a belief in the existence of something that was not real (weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, in Iraq). Their belief in something that wasn’t real led to very real actions that had global and lasting effects. Can one honestly suggest if there were reasons to believe that the WMDs were not real, that people organizing and talking about ‘something (they) don’t think is real’ would not have been important?
Atheists are individuals who see a fundamental misrepresentation of truth in the religious representation of the world. Presently they are the least trusted minority in the United States, not legally allowed to hold public office in seven states and banned from many organizations, including the Boy Scouts. The type of atheist or agnostic who joins our cause is the type of person who stands up in the face of injustice, who is not afraid to stretch the bounds of modern convention and who does not retreat their right to ask questions about something put forward with no rational basis. We are students of Northeastern and we are serious about our cause.

‘- Jason Buck is the president of the Student Atheists of Northeastern.