In regards to the May 18 letter to the editor written by Matt Burns spreading intolerance, I must say I am disappointed to see such a senseless and needless attack on a group of people whom he doesn’t even know. To make assumptions on what a humanist is based on book he “heard” about is very disturbing.

Instead of taking Matt Burns’ word on what humanist is, I looked up the term: “One who is concerned with the interests and welfare of humans.” I thought to myself, “Sounds like a decent type of being,” what we all are hopefully.

I proceeded to the excellent modern day tool of technology, the computer, and looked up “humanist” at www.google.com. It came up with thousands of sites online devoted to humanism. My favorite that I perused was www.religioustolerance.org, a seemingly non-biased site ran by people of a smorgasbord of religions committed to promoting tolerance and peace among all people.

Again I thought to myself, “Ah, this is something the world truly would benefit from, tolerance and peace.” At this site I looked up Humanism. It reiterated what I found before, plus lots of history on the group and the many different branches of humanism. Though I am sure Burns was speaking of the secular humanists and not the judaic humanists. I saw no possible way that he could compare humanism to doomsday type cults such as those that were a part of the Heaven’s Gates and Jim Jones groups. Weren’t these groups followers of Christ? Burns’ letter continued to puzzle me as to why it was even necessary to send to the newspaper.

Burns goes on to talk about Darwin and his thoughts on the beginning of life. Seems nowadays it’s a war of “evolution vs. creation.” Proponents from both sides will say that both take faith to believe in. The jury is still out on which is the true information.

I then decided to check out the book Burns mentioned, “The Jesus Puzzle,” by Earl Doherty at www.amazon.com, where excellent reviews in favor of the book were to be had. In one of these great reviews, it was suggested that you “read this book and also read ‘The Case for Christ’ by Lee Strobel.” Excellent advice that I am going to take. From there, I hope to make an informed decision on this religion, or philosophy as it is actually considered, as I would do with any of the thousands upon thousands of varied groups. Something I am sure most sane humans do before taking somebody else’s word for it.

It’s no wonder there is no peace in the world, when people start spreading lies and stereotypes about people they obviously have no clue about. Please, if we don’t make attempts to at least understand all the world’s people and what they believe as their own religion, the world will never be a safe place to raise our children’s children. As far as Burns’ accusation of what a humanist does “apparently allows them to behave in any fashion that makes them feel good, but not guilty.” I won’t be taking his word for that either, however, I am looking into a group locally, Humanists of Puget Sound, and will decide for myself what kind of people they are.

Erin Clark

Oak Harbor