Sapozhnikov’s attack on religion unsupported

Massey is a first-year history student.

By Drew Massey

I am writing in response to Igor Sapozhnikov’s submission
(“Growth
of conservatism jeopardizes freedom for everyone,” Viewpoint,
Feb. 7). This submission is without support and its title
disguises its true intentions. Only the first and last paragraphs
talk about conservatism. The real object of this submission is to
attack religion and the many atrocities it has caused.

Sapozhnikov points to the Salem witch hunts as obvious outlets
of religion. Apparently, when religious people get together, they
kill. He then goes on to mock the value system of the Puritans,
saying that they believed witches made the accused girls
“dance naked in the woods; and God forbid anybody be caught
with their knickers down.” This is absolutely ridiculous.

I, for one, am not a Puritan and don’t agree with their
exceedingly strict moral standards. But I thought we were supposed
to be tolerant of other groups. If the Puritans were still a
religious force today, Sapozhnikov might be put in Political
Correctness jail.

Now I will admit that sometimes religious people do bad things.
But the 20 some people killed in Salem do not even compare to the
number murdered by Stalin and Chairman Mao in communist regimes.
Communism does not allow religion at all. Chairman Mao himself was
a devout atheist, yet estimates assert that he ended the lives of
over a quarter of a million of his subjects. Obviously religion
does not cause deaths any more than the lack of it does.

Sapozhnikov then attacks the Civil War. According to him, the
religious Northerners obviously started the war. Sapozhnikov
elaborates, “Indeed, “˜all men are created equal under
God’ was the battle-cry for the Union. Our nation plunged
into civil war because of a potent religious awakening in the
North, demanding that the South conform to God’s
will.”

Actually the war started with the firing on Fort Sumter when
Buchanan was still president. That aside, Sapozhnikov seems to be
saying how dare the North try to end slavery. After all, the
abolitionist North was trying to make the anti-abolitionist South
conform to “God’s will,” as he puts it. And that
cry of “All men are created equal” comes from the
Declaration of Independence. The Civil War was arguably the war
we’ve fought with the most virtuous result: the abolition of
slavery.

I would like to say that no war is pretty, and many men lost
their lives on both sides, but many men gained their lives ““
their freedom ““ in this war.

At times Sapozhnikov seems bitter about religion in general.
“Why do more and more athletes,” he asks,
“attribute their abilities not on self-improvement … but on
a subjective being that seems more of a casual observer than an
active participant?” He claims one reason is that it’s
the trend. But another could be that the athletes he mentions
don’t believe God’s so subjective a being. They may
believe that the talents they were born with were due to His
grace.

But what I find laughable was his attack on George W. Bush. A
year ago Bush was asked who his favorite philosopher was, to which
he responded “Jesus Christ.” Sapozhnikov exploded.
Bringing in the question of separation of church and state, he said
that with such a statement “Dubya disenfranchised … Jews,
Muslims, devout atheists and the list goes on and on.”

I suppose if Bush had said Aristotle, Bush would have
disenfranchised all non-Greeks. Many philosophers were religious
men, and Bush’s personal opinion has nothing to do with
church and state.

This submission, intended by the headline to be an attack on
conservativism, was merely an attack on religion, Christianity
specifically. It was poorly supported and senseless.