My LTE in the Tulsa World

My letter has finally made it into the Tulsa World - but online only.

Letter to the editor: Whence 'can-do'

By Rob Abiera, Oklahoma City

In your Jan. 18 story, "How religious are we?" Bishop Bob Hayes says, "Oklahomans represent a kind of can-do pioneering spirit with its genesis in faith."

He's wrong. The "can-do pioneering spirit" he says Oklahomans represent is the product of reason, not faith. The rediscovery of the pagan philosophy of ancient Greece brought an end to the Dark Ages. Its focus on human reason led to a renewed concern with this life and this world, and the possibilities open to human beings when they are free to think for themselves as opposed to being tyrannized by religious dogma.

This discovery of the possibilities of life inspired an ever-increasing confidence based on the idea that the world is knowable, as opposed to the blind groping of faith. And it opened a new era of exploration, science and technology, leading directly to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, with its crowning achievement: the discovery of individual rights and the creation of the United States of America.