Is God Dead?

Sir:

The God [April 8] of myth, fear and superstition is dead. The God in whose name many have been tortured and killed is dead. The God who serves as the father figure watching over man is dead. The multiple Gods, representing the multiple religions with their multiple distorted views, are dead. Let secular evolutionary humanism with its love and faith in man, his wisdom and courage, be born and live.

MAURICE S. CERUL, M.D. Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic Pittsburgh

Sir: No.

NORINE MCGUIRE

Chicago

Sir: Yes.

RICHARD L. STORATZ University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Ind.

Sir: Not only is God dead--he never was.

JOSEPH LEWIS President Freethinkers of America New York City

Sir: God is dead to those who wish him so; he lives for those who hope in him. WILMER REICHMANN JR. Ministerial Student Concordia Seminary St. Louis

Sir: God isn't dead--Death is dead. Christ conquered it on the first Easter morning almost 2,000 years ago.

(THE REV.) CHARLES L. KOESTER Holy Trinity Lutheran Church West Allis, Wis.

Sir: Whether God is dead or alive is of relatively little importance; TIME is certainly very much alive when it covers such controversial topics.

URIEL DOMB Columbia University New York City

Sir: Your ugly cover is a blasphemous outrage and, appearing as it does during Passover and Easter week, an affront to every believing Jew and Christian.

EMIL D. CRISCITIELLO Mt. Vernon, N.Y.

Sir: Let us hope that the cogent arguments brought forth in the "God is dead" movement will encourage many people to lay aside their superstitious crutches and learn to walk like men.

JON L. MIKESELL, '66 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: TIME presents a lucid summary of a confusing situation. There is no doubt that the question is in the minds of many laymen and clergy, but too often the layman is afraid to ask it and the priest draws back from facing the challenge it presents.

(THE REV.) PETER R. HOLROYD Curate St. John's Parish Waterbury, Conn.

Sir: What you have written on the Death of God controversy is a disappointing pastiche of quips and quotes, obscuring the more profound issues in the faith crisis. Instead of name-dropping on the God droppers, would that you had shown your readers some of the religiously conservative elements in the new iconoclasm: recovery of the Second Commandment (against idolatrous images), recovery of ancient Jewish and Christian doctrine of the transcendence and hiddenness of God (against easy equation of God with culture or finite being), recovery of the insights of saints and mystics on the necessary Dark Nights of the Soul (against untested faith, religion without tears or doubt).

L. ALEXANDER HARPER Director for Christian Social Action United Church of Christ New York City

Sir: It is amusing to read of the theologians' desperate fun in this mathematical era, trying to prove the reality of the intangible.

ROWLAND ALLEN Indianapolis

Sir: It must be frankly admitted by Catholics that the "new theology" that preaches an atheistic secularism cannot be casually dismissed as a fad. It is too prominent, too widespread, and seeks to rock the essentials of a Christian faith that must articulate a position in the face of such a challenge. Our way of talking theism may very well be outdated, but God is not.

STEPHEN R. DE ANGELIS, S.J. Loyola Seminary Shrub Oak, N.Y.

Egg-Crate Camelot

Sir: You mistakenly support the current fad for blaming Detroit for our personal shortcomings. If cars were death-proof [April 1], if alcohol did not make you drunk, if the police were not brutal, if the Government would take care of me--ah, what a Camelot!

EARL SUNDERHAUS Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir: The current safety committee hearings in Washington are getting votes and selling books, but accomplishing little else. There are too many people on the road who shouldn't be there, but as long as they can vote, the committee will continue to pass the buck to the automobile manufacturers. If driver-license standards were stiffened, judgment, mental and physical tests given, highway laws and signs made uniform, stiffer penalties for violations enforced, the remaining good drivers could go around in a four-wheeled egg crate and never splinter the wood.

PHILIP C. WALLWORK Safety Director Automobile Legal Association Boston

Sir: The Danes and Finns are just as tough as the Swedes about even slightly tipsy motor-vehicle operators. Violations cannot be fixed; Member of Parliament, clerk, street sweeper, all live in the same terror of flunking the blood-alcohol test and being clapped into jail. Time and again, when we lived in Denmark, friends with as few as two schnapps or highballs under their belts telephoned the police--who dispatched a courteous cop, free of charge, to drive them home.

NANCY AND TEMPLE FIELDING Balearic Islands, Spain

Lingering Melody

Sir: TIME was not objective in reporting sightings of unidentified flying objects [April 1]. Journalists are under no obligation to accept blindly explanations of the "authorities," especially when those explanations insult the integrity and intelligence of responsible observers. Probably a vast majority of sightings can be rationally explained, but we are not convinced that all observers are mistaken. WILLIAM BRAINARD, KATHERINE OLSON JOHN HUDELSON, WILLIAM JONES JR. Research Engineers, NASA Lewis Research Center Cleveland

Sir: Denying that UFOs exist simply because they "elude technical explanation" is typical of what the American public is expected to accept on this subject. Methane is inflammable but not musical! If, indeed, these objects were such stuff, whence came the whine? Methane is also odorless, a blessed quality lacking in your story. TIME has been scooped by Frank Mannor and all the rest of us who have had a glimpse of the century's greatest mystery.

LOIS SYMONS Southport, England

Sir: I wish to state most emphatically that civilizations superior by far to ours are very much alive on other planets within as well as beyond pur solar system, and that their representatives do pay visits to us here on earth.

K. LEXOW Pointe Claire, Quebec

Wrapping the Censors

Sir: Eager to rejoice in the Supreme Court's apparent step backward toward your own smug preference for guarding society from "smut peddlers," [April 1] you neglect to criticize the Ginzburg case for its deviation from the legal distinction between direct and hearsay evidence: is obscenity now to be defined by examining not the product itself but how the salesman touts it? If indeed Americans so desperately need guidance that censorship is necessary, let our mentors at least concern themselves with the contents of the allegedly pornographic package instead of its wrapping.

ROBERT MCGEEHAN Member of the New Jersey Bar Brooklyn

Sir: Censorship, whether by the Supreme Court or by Hitler Youth burning books, is the same thing. Self-appointed censors --the Supreme Court, the Post Office Department, etc.--are, in this respect, morally equivalent to the Hitler Youth, the Inquisition and other charming organizations. I find it disgusting.

JON WULFF Columbus

Drafting an Alternative

Sir: Quoted as finding "something morally questionable" in the deferment of students [March 25], I want to put this remark into its wider context by adding that I have long wanted to see a national system of service established that would permit young people to enter the Peace Corps or similar (sometimes hazardous) agencies as a legitimate alternative to military service. Moreover, many students, as you suggest, are troubled by this issue, complicated as it is by their often finding the war in Viet Nam itself morally questionable. A lottery, while in some sense more democratic, contributes nothing to the problem of enlisting the idealism and capacity of young Americans for a required period of hardship and service at home or abroad.

DAVID RIESMAN Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

Where the Temple Is

Sir: Good Samaritans may be forced to pass TIME by for locating Jordan's Mount Gerizim, the sacred mountain of the Samaritan community, in Israel [April 1]. The high priest of the Samaritans, who lives with the majority of his people (all told, fewer than 400) in nearby Nablus, Jordan, may, however, be willing to forgive all, if TIME could show him where the Samaritan temple is. John Hyrcanus was supposed to have destroyed it circa 128 B.C., and there is no clear record of subsequent reconstruction. TIME may also have put Dead Sea Scrolls Dealer Kando at odds with his fellow Arabs by stating that he reported the Jericho cave finds to persons in Israel. In fact, the report reached American archaeologists, including Harvard's Semitic scholar Frank Cross, at the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, Jordan.

ROBERT J. BULL

Associate Professor of Church History Drew University Madison, NJ.

Flaying Solo

Sir: Robert Vaughn [April 1] is more O.S.T.R.I.C.H. than D.O.V.E., I'd say. Napoleon Solo is no more. Even tongue-in-cheek derring-do involves a necessary small illusion, and Mr. Vaughn has shattered it beyond repair. If David McCallum holds the same head-in-the-sand views, U.N.C.L.E. has been annihilated from within.

JAN BARNHART Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Sir: I was appalled to discover that TIME equates dissent with defection. Aren't the only real defectors from a democracy those who don't take a stand?

W. J. JAMIESON JR. New York City

The Mice That Roared

Sir: In reply to Mr. Juniper's letter in defense of Austin [April 1]: Although "a little old Texas mouse" may be "a friendly critter," one that I happen to like, I was painfully surprised to find that a whole tribe of friendly critters had set up housekeeping in the oven, closets and dog-food bags in my brand-new house; they forced me, contrary to my inclinations, to start a trap-hunting campaign. To be sure, mousetraps are rather cheap in Texas: 19-c- a pair. In my years in Europe, New England and Tennessee, I have neither become acquainted with so many rodents nor have I met such a variety of insects as I have known in my brief Texas stay. Had I majored in entomology, Texas would be for me a veritable paradise.

MELVINA L. WARRICK Killeen, Texas

Cast of Characters

Sir: It has not been clearly explained how people are removed from the plaster [April 1].

LILLIAN J. ALFKE New Milford, N.J.

Sir: 'The Casting of Ethel Scull" is old hat around here. Ten years or so ago, Bette and I cast our faces in plaster; I had to go first. The casting went as smooth as silk. I even posed on the kitchen floor with a lily in my hand and my face in the firm grip of a plaster mask. I didn't realize how firm a grip it was until I attempted to remove it. (We had used petroleum jelly without the benefit of Saran.) I was hung up by my hair and my eyelashes. My eyebrows pulled out without any fuss, but I couldn't bear to part with my eyelids. So, holding my "face" in one hand, I began to demolish the project with a hammer in the other. Pieces near my eyes broke off, and Bette sliced away blindly with a pair of scissors, shearing off my eyelashes. Once I could see, I was able to remove my inch-thick plaster skullcap by crushing it with a pair of pliers and combing out the remains. I had a rather blank expression for several weeks.

ROBERT A. KELLY Glendale, N.Y.

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