Setting all of my personal blind faith and any magical claims aside, I would like to respond to a Letter to the Editor written by Jason Buck, the president of Student Atheists of Northeastern (SANE), titled ‘Sane President:’ Moderates are Hypocrites,’ published Feb. 19 in The News. I would like to provide some constructive criticism and suggestions for SANE. I would like to begin my response with what Buck defines as a ‘SANE’ approach to a religious parable, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 7:3-5.
In this story, Jesus (assuming here that he is simply a human philosopher) is speaking to a crowd of people while sitting atop a mountain. The philosophical topic of discussion is the human trait of hypocrisy. The gist of Jesus’ message is to reconcile one’s personal hypocritical tendencies before criticizing those of others, and he conveys this message through exaggerated imagery. Jesus said, ‘How can you say to your brother ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.’ If SANE is a student group serious about their cause and credibility, I encourage their leaders to adopt a way of conveying their beliefs in a more constructive, genuine fashion.
First of all, SANE is indeed an ambiguous name, commonly used by leaders of the group to function both as an acronym and a destructive adjective. In Buck’s opening paragraph, he explicitly states that the title for his group was never intended to ‘belittle the intelligence of religious students and faculty on campus ‘hellip; but to condense our organization’s large name in a way that would generate interest and bring awareness to our cause.’ However, this clarification is blatantly contradicted several paragraphs later, where Buck himself uses the acronym to function as an adjective, stating that interpreting Jesus and his teachings ‘without using blind faith or unproven magical claims ‘hellip; is a SANE way to look at religion.’ That statement leads me and other readers to believe that interpreting Jesus’ life in any other way is, well, insane.
If SANE seeks to develop a credible image as a serious student group, their leaders should research biblical contradictions before publishing them as such. The contradiction referenced in last week’s letter (in regard to beating slaves), cited in Luke 12:47-48, is the conclusion to a parable (a metaphorical story) told by Jesus. When taken out of context, one can certainly draw violent and scary conclusions, distant from the intended meaning of the story. Context is an essential consideration to any credible conclusion.
Buck also negatively describes religious groups in an analogy, comparing such groups to the advocates behind the groundless invasion of Iraq in 2003. He equates religious groups to the political entities that justified the invasion of Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction:’ a false allegation that has cost our country thousands of lives, billions of dollars and immeasurable amounts of grief. In the same comparison, Buck points out the retrospective importance of a group to hypothetically advocate the non-existence of such weapons, and how a group exploiting this misrepresentation would have been healthy for a country acting in such blind faith. According to this analogy, such a necessity is present for atheists in society today.
The comparison is potent with misunderstandings and destructive criticism. To analogize religious faith with the damages of an unjustified war simply makes no sense. I have to ask ‘- what damage will faith cause if, in fact, there is no God?
I’m respectfully calling out people of agnostic and atheist conviction, and asking that leaders of such groups respect boundaries and differences natural to considerations of religion and faith. Instead of citing disagreements and promoting groundless assumptions, let’s work as leaders to foster healthy discussion and endorse open deliberation of life’s most complex, unanswerable questions. We must all unite, regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof), on the common ground that we, in fact, are all human beings with limited proven knowledge of how we came to exist, and that we all owe respect to the mystery inherent to human life. Whether one chooses to explain this existence through tangible fact or blind faith, we must all humbly recognize that there are unexplainable aspects of life that will go unresolved until the day our human lives cease.

‘- Brian Holt is the president of the Christian Student Union.