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John Goldthwait, Ph. D., (FOC) Letter to Editor of Florida Times Union

July 13, 2007

Editor:

Maybe the real news was that the atheists and the Christians are squabbling with one another. Again, maybe the real news is that Americans are beginning to examine the assumptions that they live by, and working out the consequences of those assumptions.

Seeing the consequences is making some Americans change their assumptions.

I am on one of the sides mentioned in Sunday's first-page story ("Christians vs. atheists: Whose side are you on?"), but in the larger view, it doesn't matter which one. It does matter which of these I believe, either (A) that out of loyalty to my side, I have got to get other people to believe the way I do, and bring every available force to be sure my side wins; or (B) that each of us should work out for himself or herself, with the best-quality thinking of which he or she is capable, what to believe about the things that are usually associated with religion, and encourage others to do the same.

According to Sunday's Times-Union, each of the mentioned groups feels it is attacked by the other. It has not always been that way in America. Despite the views of some, we know from both private and public sources that the founders of the nation created a constitution for it that kept religion and government, church and state, separate.

The colonists had just revolted against the King of England. He was the head not only of the English government but of the English church. They were not about to declare governmental separateness but fail to enforce separateness from the prevailing religion.

The new nation safeguarded the practice of religion, but did not either require or even favor it. Neither did it require or favor absence of religion from life. Just from government.

No doubt the current friction arises at least partly from the origins of the controversial intrusion into government of religious thinking in the Bush years.

Let us rather live and let live. If we are so moved, let us attempt to spread our beliefs on the matter through discussion and persuasion, but not through the attempts to marshal more and more power, particularly governmental power, on our own side. To do that is to invite destruction of the safeguards that our nation has been fortunate enough to enjoy for the couple of centuries since 1776.

John T. Goldthwait

St. Augustine