To the editors:

Re “Sunset in the West,” comment, Sept. 30:

Mark A. Adomanis is exactly right: as a non-churchgoer, I take away from “society’s vitality and general cohesiveness.” After all, as a secularist, I eat babies, hate America, and want to raise taxes.

Adomanis’ correlation between those people who are obsessed with material items and status with those people who are secular insinuates a two-way street between those two characteristics. That relation is not only uncharacteristic of many secularists, but also is as offensive as stating that people who kill to try and enforce their beliefs tend to be religious.

If one is truly concerned with “a belief in the future,” he should look directly in front of him instead of looking up at the sunset. While the cohesiveness of a religious society may very well be shown in its churches, I side with Dostoyevsky and say that “the degree of civilization in society is revealed by entering its prisons.” If one does not want a society to fall because of its feebleness, start there.

JONATHAN HYMAN ’08

September 30, 2005