Pinker’s Conception Of Faith Is Too Narrow

To the editors:



Usually sagacious, Steven Pinker writes like a philistine about faith and reason (“Less Faith, More Reason,” op-ed, Oct. 27). What is faith? Ill-founded belief, he writes, anathema to the university. What is reason? “Pure and simple.”

If only it were really so simple. Pinker writes as though philosophy were a dead letter, faith a kind of retardation, and religion a form of mass insanity. He may well believe that, but I doubt his reasons extend much beyond faith.



JASON T. CLOWER

Cambridge, Mass.

October 29, 2006



The writer is a graduate student in the Study of Religion.