To the editor:

If you have been reading letters from Rachel Laurn, and other fundamentalists, please allow me to explain why they don’t “get it.”

I will just have to refer to one of my previous letters: “By the luck of the draw they were born in a Christian environment and have adopted its teachings without much questioning. If they had been born in the Middle East, they would be busy proselytizing the beliefs of Islam and sending unbelievers, including Christians, to the everlasting fires.

If they had been born in India, they might be Sikhs, and following the wonderful tenets of that peaceful religion.

If they had been born in Persia (now Iran) they might be Zoroastrians, and be quoting the Avesta to all who would listen.

And, of course, there are hundreds or thousands of other religions and sects all claiming to have the correct view of reality.”

Their God neglected to save around 15,000 children that die every 24 hours from starvation and disease. Their God was apparently too busy doing other things and couldn’t save the thousands of refugees that drowned in the sea while fleeing to a safe haven in Europe. Their God apparently looked the other way when millions of men, women, and children were killed in the Holocaust during World War II.

Over millennia their God ignored all the millions of natural abortions, called miscarriages, that have occurred, even though the fetuses could have been saved by divine action. Their God could have prevented the plagues that ravaged humans by the millions in times past.

And, of course, their God could have eliminated all the disease causing bacteria and viruses but was apparently too busy to bother.

There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on in the minds of these fundamentalists, and they may never leave Plato’s cave in which they reside.

The world is full of caves with people looking upon the shadows as if they were reality.

There are the caves of religious fundamentalists of every kind, caves of political extremists, and caves of neo-Nazis, paranormalists, racists, homophobes, etc..

How does a person ever escape from the so-called “reality” created by the shadows? Education, research, and critical thinking is the answer.

It’s not easy and requires serious dedication, and the avoidance of confirmation bias that keeps a person looking at those dancing shadows that can persist in the production of preposterous illusions.

David Keranen

Bakersfield, California