Columnist Suzanne Fields' Aug. 14 diatribe denigrates atheists as "smug, shallow and arrogant," as suggested by the fact that atheist publications "cannot remotely compete with sales of the Bible." The Bible has been around for centuries. The atheist works she refers to are relatively new and few in number.

I've read Christopher Hitchens, to whom she refers, and others who construct well-reasoned alternative hypotheses for creation while enumerating the hypocrisies and contradictions in various religious theologies.

She defames atheists by saying they "believe in nothing." Atheists are thinking people who look at the world around them, not just to religious scripture as the foundation for their beliefs.

Physicists and biologists are continually shedding more light on the universe and its life-forms. Evolution is fact, not theory. The more that science learns the greater will be the credence given alternative theories of creation and existence.

Those who believe life was created by what most call God take it on faith, based on religious scriptures and the understandable human inability to conceive that the extraordinary diversity of life on this planet could exist of its own accord. I share that wonder but don't automatically attribute it to a supernatural force.

Her reference to David B. Hart's criticism that atheists "lack the moral intelligence and courage of their forefathers in faithlessness" is simply insulting.

Morality is a set of values by which we try to live and intelligence is the ability to reason and to form a moral view. Atheism and morality are not mutually exclusive.

Fields says that atheists "think of themselves as nonconformists." Atheists think of themselves as rational people who attempt to see the world as it is rather than how others would like them to see it. They face widespread disdain, and they do it with infinitely more courage than that required of those who blindly follow the masses.

I don't know if God does or does not exist, but neither does anyone.

Harold Wagner

Guilderland