Over the past year or so I have tried to read Deen Chatterjee’s God-bashing articles with an open mind. But the latest one “Believing in God can be a reasonable choice” goes too far. The headline is anything but a summary of what is contain within. Chatterjee obviously does not believe in God, and goes as far as to call those of us who do “desperate”, “wishful”, irrational and unreasonable. Throughout the article “we” is used to refer to those who believe in God as if Chatterjee actually is included in the group of those who believe in a higher power.
Chatterjee expects us to accept the aforementioned name-calling based on the completely unsupported, unelaborated arguments that “The idea of an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good God is hard to put together logically” because somehow “Each of these three attributes is conceptually questionable, and taken together, they are mutually inconsistent.” I would like some kind of explanation of why these three attributes are mutually inconsistent. I would imagine that if someone were all-powerful (omnipotent), and all-knowing (omniscient) that they would have a pretty good shot at being all-good, although I imagine their definition of what is good would be better than ours (remember they are all-knowing and all-powerful).
I have no problem with someone not believing in God. That is their prerogative. But to attack those who believe differently using big words and unsupported arguments to hide a thinly veiled slandering of people whose beliefs are different is just plain unacceptable. If I were to write an article attacking homosexuals or feminists that speaks of their beliefs in the way that this article attacks those who believe in God I would be labelled a bigot if nothing worse. I am offended that the Chrony continues to print trash like this in the guise of an informed opinion.
Jacob TrippSeniorComputer Science
