Letter: ‘Faith’ not needed to care about people

Friday, March 2, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

It's sad that University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos would express such bigoted and irrational ideas in his defense of discrimination against atheists in his Feb. 28 column headlined, "Why faith, or a lack of it, is relevant to political life."

The only legitimate statement by Campos is that "the human race has existed for an eye-blink of cosmological time and will certainly cease to exist in another eye-blink or two."

But then Campos comes to the strange conclusion that a "genuine atheist" (whatever that means) would respond by saying, "So what?" implying that atheists are not concerned with extinction of the human race. That is sheer nonsense.

An atheist might say, "So what," regarding the cause of the existence of the human race. But we certainly care about the future of humanity.

Almost all atheists (which includes those who call themselves humanists, agnostics, freethinkers, etc.) believe we must be proactive in delaying the extinction of our planet. We cannot wait for some deity to intervene. If we don't act to save ourselves we will truly be doomed sooner, rather than later.

Campos asserts that the desires to save ourselves "don't make sense without a belief ... in God." Well, it should make sense to any rational person.

We believe that the future of the human race depends on the present actions of the human race. This makes us, according to Campos, unqualified to be president of our country. That is nothing more than a lame attempt to excuse bigotry.

Mel Lipman, Las Vegas

The writer is president of the American Humanist Association.