- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Mr. Thompson's expressed dismay about being merely "an accident of nature" solved a mystery for me. Now I understand why folks get so darn upset about evolution: they are terrified of death, unless there is the guarantee of something beyond it.
News flash, Mr. Thompson: It's true that "if you die ... you'll change into something else." When someone dies, the body rots, the worms come, and before long, you're compost. If there is a noncorporeal component that endures (and science doesn't have anything to say about that, really, since "noncorporeal" is not in science's portfolio)that's fine and good, but the body rots.
Death is truly terrifying, the mystery to end all mysteries. For some people, faith is a way to deal with the terror, but for a few of those folks, it only works if it is unchallenged. That's sad.
I hope for Mr. Thompson's sake that he can someday find a faith that will stand up to the idea that not everyone agrees with him about Heaven and Hell. I hope that he finds out, someday, that there are lots of human beings who behave themselves not out of a terror of hellfire, but because they believe their behavior matters, not only on some account book in the sky, but in the greater scheme of, yes, creation.
