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Meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month (Sept. thru June) at the: Maurice M. Pine Public Library 10-01 Fair Lawn Ave., Fair Lawn, NJ
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Letter to The Villadom Times Dear Editor, For the third time in a matter of months I must respond to Mr. Koster’s Outlaw Journalist column (4/16/02). I am the reader who suggested that he should be named Man Of The Year, the year 1400. That he should take this as a compliment simply shows that he is as unenlightened as the Europeans of that age. I have no personal grudge against Mr. Koster; in fact I have never met him. I do, however, object to his passing off his zealot, fanatical ideas as hard facts and as science. In the very first sentence of this column Mr. Koster states, “that belief in God has been firmly established by scientific fact”. This is, patently, the most unfounded, deluded, ridiculous comment since a scout said “Yes, General Custer, there are a few Indians there, and they seem very friendly”. There has been no scientific fact that proves the existence of God. Mr. Koster also seems to believe that any theory of the origins of life that seem to differ from Creationism come from the Soviet Union and totalitarian regimes. He would have enjoyed being a leader of McCarthyism, seeing “reds and atheists” everywhere! Although it would have been a step up from the Middle Ages, it still would have shown a very narrow way of thinking. Mr. Koster also talks of Kings and Bishops “working shoulder to shoulder with the merchants and artisans and ordinary people” to build the great cathedrals of Europe. Here Mr. Koster leaves the realm of Pseudo-Science and enters a new land of Pseudo-History. C’mon John, those Kings and Bishops didn’t soil their hands. They are the people you most despise (like Darwin and Spencer) for being born rich and never having to do a “day’s work”. I bet ordinary people (read peasants, serfs and peons) were mighty glad to hand a brick to their King so he could mortar it into place! The only reason “ordinary people” put up with being treated like they did was because the Church told them to respect and obey their anointed rulers, because God put those Kings on Earth to lead – and that come an afterlife (also no scientific fact to back up an afterlife) all people would be equal in the sight of God. To be honest, this was a brilliant idea, that is, if you were one of those people in a position of power. It was a great way to keep the people down. Mr. Koster should also look at true history and see the not-quite-so-spotless lives that the clerics of that age led. I also bet a lot of the people slaughtered by the Knights Hospitalers/Templers (Priests/Warriors/Crusaders who also killed Christians as well as Muslims) were pleased knowing that these good people helped endow a few charitable organizations. Mr. Koster also wants to know what the monuments of the Darwinian age are and whether they will stand the test of time like some of Europe’s great cathedrals. There will probably be some buildings built from 1859 (publication date of “Origin Of The Species”) to the present day that will be standing in a few hundred years, but are they the real monuments, or achievements, of Humankind in the last 150 years or so? I think not. Our monuments are of the mind. The greatest monument being the fact that people are thinking for themselves and not blindly following the supernatural teachings of a few people who wish to stagnate and stay unenlightened. Unfortunately, in this day and age we still see some parts of the world suffering under religious suppression like Europe suffered through in its Dark Ages (or even worse). Our monuments are the advances in all the Sciences and Humanities. The Human Genome Project, knowledge/information at people’s fingertips with computers, putting a man on the Moon, curing polio, discovering penicillin are but a few examples. These are just a few of the monuments that our age has built, slightly more important than a few pretty buildings! Mr. Koster states that he would have preferred to be named Man Of The Year for the year 1200. That makes sense to me as Europe was more mired in the Dark Ages, where the Renaissance was not even a gleam in da Vinci’s eye! Europe in the Middle/Dark Ages was a terrible place to live in. Women were treated as second-class citizens, people had to blindly follow religious leaders and individual thought was considered heresy. Doesn’t this sound a bit like a regime that we recently helped to oust? (see Taliban/Afghanistan articles – it’s been in all the newspapers lately, but maybe it is acceptable to Mr. Koster when it happened in Europe because it was done in the name of Christianity) Also, let us not forget things such as the Black Plague, which killed almost half of the people in some areas and the ever-popular Inquisition. Alas, I will continue to read Mr. Koster’s column, and yes, I will also continue to write in each time he tries to bring back the dark ages of Europe, with it’s religious suffocation and destruction of human individual thought. Andy Rosen |
