Letter: Direct readers to worship page, not to Brown

Talk about it

I am disappointed in the banner headline that appeared in Sunday’s paper which encouraged readers to “Read an excerpt from Dan Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol,’ Look for ‘Parade,’ an insert in today’s Dickinson Press.”

I’ll have you know that I did not read that article but it went out with the trash. It took one highlighted line from the article to make me do this. “Religion has the power to make you think nothing is random.” I feel that this is a fallacious statement.

I feel that the amount of randomness that does exist in the universe is allowed by a preemptive God of order. First came the creator, an ordered creative and design entity. Then came the universe with an amount of randomness that allows for the proliferation of the natural world and physical laws. So, uncertainty and unforeseen occurrence is a fact of our existence and experience.

The Latin “religio” basically means reverence to a deity and a system of religious belief. A “system of belief” is quite individual, yet inclusive in scope. So it would also include the author’s belief system. His belief system is intrinsically awry because it dismisses other belief systems as objectionable random alternatives when, in fact, they are worthy prerogatives of the exercise of intellect and free will. Here is where random could really mean allowance.

Thinking and belief are personally controlled intellectual processes allowed within a both randomly free and ordered contingency.

Perhaps it would be better to point people in the direction of the worship page. The perils of doubt and despair lurk around disorder and chaotic leanings. There is great need to encourage people and give them faith and hope in an ordered universe, with a creative act involved, in what I feel is an obviously designed, controlled, somewhat random and free elaborate plan. Creation!

A child is born to dream, explore and believe.

Craig Kappel, Dickinson

Tags: opinion, letters, craig, kappel, lost, symbol, dan, brown