Don’t tase me, bro

[Re: “More minority cops,” Angel, Aug. 28] I fully agree with Ontario criminologist James Drennan that the cops must be “smarter, more humane and more tolerant.” 

The riot on August 10 in Montreal North truly reflects the simmering anger of many Montreal communities against the police force. 

Instead of becoming defensive, the police should mend their ways and use the torture instruments, like the taser guns, only when necessary! 

Also, instead of having an “overly homogenous” police force, the city needs to employ more recruits from the minority communities.

>>Jalaluddin S. Hussain

Evil is not God’s fault

[Re: “Distorting the truth,” Letters, Aug. 7] Lawrence Healy is correct in asserting that there’s a strong movement to force “formal religious belief systems” to “coalesce under the banner of humanism.” He misses the mark in suggesting such “a deity-free system” will provide “practical principles for living.”

Secular “inclusiveness” is not a virtue when it accepts the evil of homosexuality and murder through abortion. Secular humanism cannot and never will “reconcile mutually exclusive differences” because it admits to no objective moral standard, which is necessary to resolve all differences.

John Dirlik also misses the boat in suggesting that God is a “man-made invention...that is now doing more harm than good.” The reality of God’s existence is so obvious when one realizes that the universe could not have created itself anymore than a chair can create a piano. There has to be supreme intelligence behind the unfathomable complexity of even a single life-giving cell.

Such an all-powerful and all benevolent God could hardly be the reason for evil. Contrary to Dirlik, evil is easily explainable as being that which is the absence of good.

Evil occurs when man uses his free will to disobey the laws of God as handed down in the 10 Commandments. The real mystery is not evil but why men choose not to put their faith in and believe in a Supreme Being!

It is not God but man who is the “callous monster” when he engages in the “raping and murder of innocent children.”

>>John Hill, Toronto, On

Entre Sartre

[Re: “Religion as economy,” Letters, Aug. 7] In opposition to A. L. Healey’s recent comments, I contend that humanism as a philosophy isn’t enough because sometimes hope isn’t enough.

Instead of elaborating by paraphrasing myself, I’d rather, in this case, just quote myself. The following paragraphs come from a critique of humanism, which is excerpted from Beyond Sartre and Sterility (a book I self-published in 2002).

A humanist cannot survive shipwreck if he feels nothing stronger than hope. Only those capable of passing from hope to faith can endure the shipwreck of the human imagination. Only the survivors who realize how human reason melts in the face of catastrophe can claim endurance is stronger than sanity. Anyone abandoned by knowledge is not necessarily lost to courage.

Faith offers the bottom of sensibility. Yet in the face of catastrophe, when there’s nearly nothing left, it is the bottom we need. At that point, we shed humanism like an outworn skin.

We arrive at a certain quality of desperation, which is tolerable only because we perceive ourselves belonging, not to humanity but to being. We see the difference between hope and faith in this distinction between a self and a creature.

Faith posits another inner productivity based not on distinctly human power but on purely natural wonder, focused not on success but on transcendence. Humanism is vulnerable because fate has no respect for its good sense, being always ready to confront it with disaster or corruption or death.

Fate can be senseless, which is why one needs to face it with a gravity independent of our worldly reasons: the gravity of faith.

>>L. S. Cattarini

Mirror sets standard
for excellence!

[Re: “Alphabet twist,” People, Aug. 14] I loved the article published about KabalahYoga. I checked the site and it’s very meaningful and you feel relaxed once looking at Dr. Gozlan’s video.

This is one of the greatest articles ever published by any newspaper in Montreal!

>>Eli

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