To the editor:

Nothing makes sensible, articulate people spout nonsense more flowingly than does religious faith, as Leonard Pitts unwittingly demonstrates in his column of Dec. 6.

Ridiculing the violent reaction of Sudanese Muslims to a toy (a teddy bear incautiously named “Muhammad” by a well-meaning teacher), he excuses religion per se for such “craziness” and lays blame on fundamentalism – that tendency to seize the most unyielding feature of your religion and flog your fellow humans with it.

Pitts ostentatiously, and too easily, gags on this rotten fruit while praising the wormy tree that produced it. The so-called holy books that fuel the “great” faiths are replete with bigoted sentiments that revolt any modern, civilized person, and inevitably spawn the insanities Pitts deplores. To cherry-pick the comparatively few, and narrow, words of compassionate tolerance in those texts is to whitewash the true origins and character of these ideologies. Fundamentalists are the ones who get the ancient traditions “exactly right,” sad to say. Intolerance is the core business of monotheism.

Believing you have special, supernaturally inspired knowledge, hot from the eternal source of existence and morality, is an inherently extreme idea, and nothing reliably gracious or humble can come from it. There is no moderate form of such a radical notion, though fortunately many have learned to downplay its arrogant, lunatic implications and get along with their neighbors anyway. Thank centuries of emerging naturalistic humanism for that small favor. May its influence spread, in Sudan and closer to home.

Bruce S. Springsteen,

Lawrence