Flawed opinion
(In response to Shala Marks’s Tuesday column, “Secular practices disrespect significance.”)
Shala Marks’s opinion in Tuesday’s Point/Counterpoint on secular traditions diluting religious holidays is deeply flawed. The fact that Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead hardly gives them (or her) the right to rail against secular traditions that have sprung up around Easter.
Secularism alone is not enough to weaken the traditions of her belief system … unless those beliefs were already on shaky ground to begin with.
Marks says that “people would rather create false ideas and concepts” than recognize the true importance of religious holidays. False ideas and concepts? You mean like advocating for (as Marks does) the patently nonsensical notion of teaching creationism to children as if it were a provable scientific fact?
Marks says that “secular practices do nothing but disrespect religious holidays,” a comment at which I can only smirk in light of the rich Christian tradition of respecting those who are different from their idea of normal. As Borat so eloquently put it, “not!”
Finally, Marks says that those who enjoy secular holiday traditions “say their way is better.” Um, you mean like Christians say that their way is better? Or Jews, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, NRA members … you get the picture. The world is full of people who say their way is better. And it’s up to us as intelligent, informed adults to make our own decisions. We don’t need to be lectured by a high and mighty Christian who’s too busy accusing others to notice the gaping holes in her own argument.
Nick Blumberg ASU Undergraduate
