Hard to believe his argument

Re “Do we need faith? Believe it,” Opinion, Oct. 7

How could Lee Siegel seriously suggest that Enlightenment ideas endanger human imagination? Science, like art, philosophy and culture, would be fruitless but for our abiding appreciation of the mysterious. Fundamentalist fetishes like faith and demands for “proof” limit our vision of what is possible. The contemporary anti-God books sensibly urge that we recognize the weakness of beliefs for which there is little or no evidence, and that we guide our civilization by propositions we can test and for which we can obtain strong corroboration. Faith remains the realm of things for which there is and can be no evidence, and it deserves no public policy reverence simply because it is ancient, emotionally comforting or said to be “sacred.”

Bill Spivey

Pomona

What Siegel forgets, or can’t accept, is the fact that believers aren’t just expressing opinions. They think that what they believe holds true, not only for them but for me (and for him too). If they could, they’d pass legislation to force all of us to conform with their private opinions. Siegel then goes on to express “concern” that such books attack “the human imagination.” Nonsense. Most humans are aware that the fruits of their imaginations are subjective. “Anti-God” books seek to rescue the human imagination from medieval ignorance, to free it from the straitjacket of religious orthodoxy, misogyny and superstition. It’s as though Siegel saw the same word in two phrases (“religious faith” and “leap of faith”) and decided -- wrongly -- that an attack on one is an attack on the other. “Category mistake” indeed.

Ellis Weiner

Studio City

Siegel takes many incredible leaps of logic. Maybe Siegel’s love life is a leap of faith, but that sounds more like a schoolgirl crush than a mature, adult relationship. And his assertion the “campaign against religious faith and superstition triumphed long ago in the West” must be based upon something other than fact. Can you imagine serious candidates for the presidency admitting they have no belief in God or aren’t regular churchgoers? Perhaps Siegel himself is illustrative of at least one of the points made by the authors he criticizes. He makes statements he believes to be fact, but they really are just assertions of his own belief system. Thankfully, unlike President Bush’s, Siegel’s beliefs aren’t harmful to others.

Jim Gilmore

Moorpark

It may be true that no priest holds a high government position. But taxpayer dollars have been appropriated by the Bush administration for religious -- specifically Christian -- programs. And perhaps the reason atheists and agnostics protest Christianity rather than the administration’s perversion of Christian values is that the vast majority of Christians elide these perversions, feeling that the administration’s profession of Christianity is sufficient to forgive these sins. (Could all those dollars figure into this equation?) Finally, nonbelievers consistently demonstrate their ability to take leaps of faith, as evidenced in their intellectual and artistic accomplishments, not to mention the courage to express their views in a world in which certain fanatical believers actively wish them dead.

William D. Wolff

Los Angeles