At least the Rev. Camping's theory was verifiable

To the Editor: Religious people have no right to criticize the beliefs of anyone else’s religion. The Rev. Camping deserves respect for putting his beliefs on the line with a theory that could be disproven — a specific date for the end of the world. Other religions make assertions that they insist are factual but which can never be verified: the Mormon belief in Joseph Smith’s claim that he conversed with God, the Unification belief in the Rev. Moon’s claim that he is the Second Coming of Christ, the Catholic belief that they actually (not symbolically) eat the body of their man-god, the evangelical belief that Genesis represents historical fact. None of these claims can be verified, and so religious leaders make a virtue of faith. The Rev. Camping is neither arrogant nor senile but merely thought that his lifetime of study of the Bible had given him an insight that others had missed, and he considered it his humble duty to spread this news as far as possible. The failure of the Rev. Camping’s theory, however, rather than reap jeers, should cause all religious people to consider whether their theories, unverifiable as they are, may also be false. K.J. Walters Monroe