Dear Editor:
In response to: ‘Believing what you know untrue,? The Citizen, March 7 page 6, written by a self-proclaimed atheist criticizing Christians for their lack of reason and for retrogressions organized religion has caused on mankind. This individual is misinformed.
What I know is true:
The vast majority of hospitals, schools, and orphanages in developing world countries were started by, and are often still staffed by, Christian missionaries who gave up comfortable lives to help the less fortunate.
The majority of charities in the US were started by Christian people who wanted to help their fellow man.
The black eye on organized Christianity was the Inquisition. It was inexcusable. But not everything done in the name of God is done by godly men. Still, only a few hundred lives were touched by this atrocity. This in no way lessens the wrong, but the Inquisition was a relatively small event in world history.
Atheistic countries have proven to be the most barbaric governments this world has ever seen. Governments in the former U.S.S.R., China, North Korea, and others routinely torture and murder their own citizens. Their value of human life is virtually nonexistent. Atheism has been responsible for more deaths in the last 100 years than Christianity has in the last 2000 years.
Atheism has done nothing for the betterment of mankind. Christianity through the centuries has had a major influence on human rights, women’s rights, education, health care, labor laws, and made countless other improvements on society.
Dr. Donald Holliday
Ortonville