Reason, Belief

In the opinion article “The Outer Limits of Faith,” April 13, Times staff writer Solomon Moore writes, “Faith . . . must be coupled with justice and tempered with reason.”

Unfortunately, Moore commits the basic, fatal error that all religionists and theists commit in trying to temper belief and reason; i.e., reason and belief are mutually exclusive. In order to have a logical statement, it is always necessary to start with a valid premise.

By starting with an invalid premise (God exists), any fallacious argument (committing suicide, inflicting violence on others or obedience to dead people’s writings) could be made to sound reasonable.

The breakdown that led to last month’s mass suicide [of Heaven’s Gate members] was caused by people forced to make decisions on their options in life without any training in how to think critically.

THEODORE DENT

Chatsworth