To the editor:

I’m normally not a very outspoken person, but I felt the column entitled “Nothingness,” published on Thursday, March 20 and written by Dan Johnson, needed a response.

The first thing I want to say is that atheists all have their own personal beliefs, just like anyone from any other religion, even Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and, I’m sure, even Satanists.

I say this because of what was said about morals.

To some extent atheists, such as I, have some sense and use of morals, otherwise we’d all be in jail instead of writing letters to the local college newspaper.

Atheism is, basically, the not believing or disbelieving in a god, all gods or just some or certain gods.

Disbelieving and not believing are two different things.

Disbelieving means one doesn’t believe something to be true at all, while not believing can be described as not really knowing if something is true or not.

Atheism is fairly impartial as to much of anything else, so an atheist doesn’t have to have morals, but those not in prison have at least some.

Most of the truly impartial people, in any subject, I know are atheists since we tend not to have any predetermined religious beliefs clouding our judgement, and tend to see events, problems and solutions from a multitude of different angles.

I’ve heard of an atheist professor here on campus that teaches Bible study simply because he teaches some courses on religion.

Then I’ve heard about the way he teaches the Bible study, and it is as an indifferent instructor that can, on demand, argue for or against the Bible and will often out-debate someone who is on the other end of the discussion.

We also tend to think differently and sometimes more imaginatively than others because of that lack of predetermined beliefs getting in the way.

Atheists may seem to not have a conscience because we don’t have to worry about “sinning;” we just tend to take things at face value and either try to change things, if needed or desired, or just go along with whatever happens.

We also tend not to worry about what happens, since we have a tendency to use the old adage, “What is done is done,” or “Oh well,” since we probably couldn’t have changed the situation, even if we wanted to, or we might have tried and whatever we tried didn’t work.

Anyway, the attitude is better than, “The Lord’s will be done,” which has to be the lamest excuse ever used.

Atheism could even be considered not a religion, since it doesn’t believe in any gods or even have a set of beliefs other than no belief in god.

Not only that, but there are no rituals or events that atheists have to follow or attend, even though there are people who claim to be atheists who have some strange notions about atheism and then impose these beliefs on other atheists because it’s on their Web site.

I’ve done some research on the Internet about a few religions, including atheism and have found many strange ideas and beliefs, along with some truly down-to-earth stuff about all I have researched.

You just have to find the really good Web sites to get the good information about things, just as in any case.

Even though I’m atheist, I also tend to lean toward a religion, even as Dan Johnson does.

My favor is toward Taoism where the believers follow paths towards enlightenment.

As to the fashion sense, I agree that I’m no Calvin Klein, but I don’t dress too horribly, so we aren’t all totally helpless in that area of life.

Eric Ingamells

Freshman

Computer engineering