The Nov. 11 front-page article “Kennedy’s allies revel in newly found clout,” about a recent anti-vaccine conference, exposed the movement’s misuse of faith to justify vaccine opposition. The article reported that Del Bigtree, a former top political adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and head of the anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network, said, “God is an anti-vaxxer, and he needs you to speak up.” It’s essential to remind fellow citizens that both medical science and sincere religious conviction call us to preserve life, not endanger it.
The Bible consistently lifts up compassion, wisdom and care for the vulnerable. Proverbs 24:11 teaches, “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.” This is a clear call to intervene for public health. Faith is not an excuse for fear or misinformation. Instead, it compels us to cherish evidence, act with love and reject narratives that neglect the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).
Vaccines save lives — particularly the lives of children and the vulnerable. God is no anti-vaxxer: Responsible science and religious tradition stand together in advancing health, hope and care.
Y. Tony Yang, Washington
The writer is a professor of health policy at George Washington University.
Reasons to believe
Charles Murray’s Nov. 16 op-ed, “I now believe in God. My peers are in disbelief.,” noted that many in academic and policy circles react to religious belief with disbelief or condescension. What most critics overlook is that faith persists not because people abandon reason but because it answers needs that intellectual life often cannot. Fyodor Dostoevsky understood this well: The mind can explain much, but it cannot fully satisfy the human hunger for meaning.
You don’t have to share a believer’s metaphysics to notice its effects. People rooted in a tradition often seem steadier in the face of uncertainty — a quality many highly educated circles, for all their sophistication, quietly envy. Of course, meaning can also be found in art, philosophy or humanistic pursuits. But even these pursuits, for all their richness, can be poor substitutes for faith.
Murray’s journey isn’t the puzzle. The puzzle is why we keep expecting intellect alone to meet needs older and deeper than intellect itself.
Regina Nappo, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Charles Murray’s op-ed was a heartwarming tale of how he found spiritually. But this and most pro-spiritual Christian-based arguments I have read nearly always fail to ask, “What really happened 2000 years ago in Galilee?”
I am not challenging Murray’s newfound faith. We all have beliefs. Mine is evolutionary biology. But very few believers that I have met understand the historical context leading to the formation of their own faiths.
The need for a belief in unseen powers appears to be genetically determined in all Homo sapiens, which was addressed by neuroscientist Andrew Newberg in “How God Changes Your Brain” and “Born to Believe.” But beliefs in a Christian god, Buddha, Hindu gods, animist gods or thousands of other spiritual leaders that have existed for 40,000 years does not mean such gods exist. My recommendation is that faith-based believers understand their religion’s history and comparative religious literature more thoroughly.
Mark Tomassoni, Laurel
Nuclear arms control remains in force
The headline of Serhii Plokhy’s Nov. 11 op-ed was right: “Putin’s nuclear threats require a careful response.” He is correct that, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev’s Limited Test Ban Treaty “paved the way for future arms control and reduction agreements.” But Plokhy’s suggestion that most nuclear arms control and reduction agreements are gone today requires clarification.
The Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), Outer Space Treaty (1967), Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1968), Seabed Arms Control Treaty (1971), Threshold Test Ban Treaty (1974) and New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (2010) are all still in force.
There are several nuclear treaties that are no longer in force, including the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT I (1972), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (1991). But SALT I was meant to be a five-year “interim agreement,” the INF was violated by Russia, so the U.S. withdrew, and START was eventually replaced by the New START Treaty.
For more than 60 years, arms control treaties have helped regulate nuclear behavior and weaponry. For 80 years, we have avoided the use of nuclear weapons. The New START Treaty will end Feb. 5, 2026, with no successor in sight. It would be a tragedy if we forgot the significant successes of nuclear arms control and returned to the nuclear risks of the Cold War.
Chris Herrick, Arlington
Good writing is not suspect
The Nov. 13 online Technology article “What are the clues that ChatGPT wrote something? We analyzed its style.,” was based on the premise that “authentic” human writing is sloppy, fragmentary and barely punctuated — and that anything clearer than a text smashed out with thumbs half-awake must have originated from artificial intelligence. That assumption isn’t just wrong; it’s deeply condescending.
The list of AI tells bordered on satire. Contractions such as “isn’t,” “don’t” and “you’re”? Em dashes? Logical transitions? Balanced phrasing such as “not just X, but Y”? Even the presence of a check-mark emoji? These are features of competent, grammatical writing, not necessarily machine-generated text.
Plenty of humans write with intention, structure and proper grammar. Many of us value clarity. The idea that clear, well-structured writing is suspect is absurd. Ordinary people write coherent sentences.
Mark Whaley, Lincoln, Nebraska
Keith Moore recently created a quiz to test readers’ conceptions about urban and rural Americans. The Post wants to know: What do city dwellers not understand about rural life? Share your response, and it might be published in the letters to the editor section.
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