Sometimes I overreact. It’s true. Devil’s advocate is my favorite game, and I always win. As a rule, I try not to respond too quickly to arguments with which I disagree, as my motivation is often just to defend the other side, but after reading Phil Ingram’s editorial on religion (“Warped Religion,”March 27), I made an exception.

Despite addressing a highly sensitive topic, Ingram failed to do the one thing required of journalists, social commentators and second graders everywhere: his homework.
His introduction characterized religion as an institution “no one trusts.” I would love to see that statistic. I would love to meet the scientifically selected focus group that was given the question “Do you trust religion?” in which 100 percent of participants checked no. I’m sure the citation was just cut by sloppy copy editing.

He also claims religious-affiliated news to be dominated exclusively by wars, contraceptives and child molestation. Am I missing something? Is everyone talking about copulating priests without me? Just to make sure, I put the word “religion” in a Google News search, which gave me a flurry of articles reporting on — I’m not making this up — the recently passed U.N. initiative to condemn public defamation of religion. Ironic.

So, let’s talk about religion. Except not all religion, just Islamic extremists and Catholics, because these are the only two groups with which Ingram seems to be concerned. In terms of religious wars, in that they’re, you know, bad, I concede the point. In fact, we all do, so I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince there.

Which brings us to the Catholic Church’s views on contraceptives. Are you really surprised the Bible doesn’t mention condoms? Would you also be surprised if I told you it doesn’t mention microwaves, nuclear bombs or things made of plastic? It’s a good thing Christianity is not, as Ingram says, based solely on the Bible, as we would then have no stance on any of the moral issues at hand in the modern world.

Contraceptives and STD protection are highly contested points both inside and outside Catholicism, but never in my 21 years of attending mass have I witnessed a priest “emotionlessly mumble” the church’s views — and it’s not because they don’t respect themselves, it’s because they do. Moreover, the unfounded accusation that a religious leader would condemn abortion simply out of bitterness toward your uncomplicated sex life is perhaps the cheapest, most disrespectful claim I have ever read in print.

I understand religion breeds controversy, and I’m not claiming it always lands on the right side. I also understand Catholicism is an easy target — you certainly could not have so defamed the tenets and leaders of Judaism or any Eastern religion without creating a campus-wide uproar — but it’s important to understand there’s more to religion than what we read in the papers.

Our country is facing an era of unfamiliar fears, and we as college students are in the most crucial growing years of our lives. In times like these, there is something to be said for believing in miracles. There is intrinsic value in surrounding yourself with people who believe so strongly in something that they can’t even begin to explain why. It’s called faith, and if you want to attack it, Phil Ingram, you better come at us with more than false statistics and self-projected scenarios. We’ll beat you every time.

—Carolyn Pippen is a senior in the College and Science. She can be reached at Carolyn.m.pippen@vanderbilt.edu.