I don’t spend a lot of time wondering where my money goes when I buy food. I figure it’s going to the employees, the owner of the franchise, and whatever is left goes to some obscure CEO locked up in an office, counting his money. I always figured these guys were like Scrooge; they made you work in the cold, giving you as little time off to spend with your invalid son as possible. It never occurred to me some of these guys might actually hold religious views that seriously jeopardized the liberties of others. Thomas Monaghan, founder of Dominoes Pizza™, has built a rather large Catholic town in Florida called Ave Maria. After purchasing precious swamp land, he decided to create a new Eden, where fresh faced young Christians can witness to one other, while they deny their fellow citizens birth control, and the ability to have safe abortions. He didn’t go halfway into this venture; Monaghan poured his billion dollar fortune into building his Catholic haven, selling his business to afford this dream.

When 27 million dollar creation museums are springing up, you know fundamentalists have access to some serious cash, but Monaghan goes far beyond the hopes and dreams of exclusionary pious folks. He’s not the only business owner with deep pockets who is pushing an agenda; Gary Heavin, the founder and CEO of Curves™, donates a considerable amount of his earnings to pro-life organizations. Although the chain itself is not involved, its growing popularity has no doubt allowed a substantial increase in his donations.

Although I do believe people should be allowed to spend their money as they see fit (so long as no one is hurt), I nevertheless feel it is my duty not to support any company or institution I feel is doing people a disservice. Monaghan’s University is just another fledgling religious lapdog, ready to churn out countless generations of conservatively minded individuals who oppose women’s right to choose, gay marriage, or not generally believing in a bearded, andro-centric god. Although he no longer owns Dominoes, it might prompt me to be a bit more careful where I choose to purchase.

If you want any solid proof that a Pope is as flawed, ignorant, and uneducated as the rest of us, look no further than Benedict XVI. When he isn’t busy making controversial statements about Islam, he likes to take a breather by trying to dismantle evolution by means of Natural Selection by perpetually pointing at dusty old tomes. His latest blunder comes care of an off collar remark asking: “[h]ow many of these people are there today? These people, fooled by atheism, believe and try to demonstrate that it’s scientific to think everything is free of direction and order.“

Ratzinger is not a complete fool; although he lacks any training and understanding of evolution, he knows enough to realize it seriously undermines the role of his creator God, which therefore puts his cushy job in jeopardy.

For the Vatican, it’s a departure from John Paul II comments claiming evolution was more than a theory, and was not incompatible with Christianity. In July, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn said that John Paul’s statements were ‘vague and unimportant’, and himself backed the notion a designer must have been responsible for the complexity of the universe.

I don’t know about you, but I’m personally sick and tired of priests, cardinals and popes (the vast majority of them having no scientific training whatsoever) telling every scientist that they are wrong about the natural world. These are the same men who devote their entire lives to the study of the supernatural, which by definition can never be measured, or even properly understood. Never mind the fact that two Popes, who are supposed to be the infallible avatars of God, never seem to agree on anything; the simple fact is their authority extends no further than their own secluded belief structure. The very act of trying to extend their sophisticated form of fantasizing to the natural world only demonstrates their own hubris. These people may have power and influence, but if those in power still determined the truth, we would never have escaped the hell of the Dark Ages.

Benedict XVI should go back to the one activity that does absolutely no harm: praying. Since it’s a well demonstrated fact that prayer has no effect whatsoever, at least he can stop meddling in affairs which don’t concern him. If someone wants to know how many angels, fairies, or dragons can fit on the end of a pin, then they can give him a call. Otherwise, for any questions concerning the real world, don’t have him on your speed dial.

Let’s face it; we’re used to being generally despised; it’s so unsurprising, in fact, that when I fell upon this site, www.christianfaithandreason.com, I practically glossed over the familiar rhetoric of atheists are deluded and wrong. Had I done so, I would have missed the opportunity to read an article by the obscure author of Letters to a Christian Nation: Counterpoint. Although the title may sound like a cheesy B movie, the meat of the tome is that atheists are doing the world (specifically the Christian one) a giant disservice by bashing religion.

What could be wrong with a healthy skeptical attitude towards religion, you say? Well, how about Europe’s disastrous population problem? With the advent of modern contraception, nonreligious folks are having fewer and fewer babies, while Muslims, not bound by enlightened attitudes regarding population control, breed like rabbits. Slowly but surely, he argues, Western society will inevitably breed itself into the minority, allowing the dangerously backward ideas of Islam to permeate the world.

Not to say Dr. Metcalf is wrong about the dwindling populations of westerners (i.e., white people), or even his statistics on the growing Muslim population in Europe. My big question here is this: What does this have to do with atheism? Well, since the title of his article is Atheist Diversionary Tactics, one can only assume he blames the lack of religiosity for this frightening trend. You see, in his world, a population explosion of westerners (people who generally share his skin color and outlook on monogamy) would mean a good thing. Never mind the notion that the Earth couldn’t handle it; this is a war of ideologies. And if there are more Muslim soldiers than Christian ones, their particular mythology might not survive.
I feel compelled to remind Dr. Metcalf that atheists are opposed to every fantasy prone religion, and for us, color isn’t the issue here. The general attack on Christianity in the US is not a product of atheists ganging up on them for no reason; it is because the growing influence and power of fundamentalists who believe their Holy book should teach science and dictates laws. Unlike Metcalf, we’re not comfortable with that idea.

What seemed deliciously ironic was that one individual commented succinctly over Mr. Metcalf’s decidedly irrelevant rant concerning both atheists and Muslims in general. He stated:

[A]ny democractic [sic] republic which includes Muslims must include them as citizens if it is to representative. This involves a certain level of cultural exchange and understanding, which enable all people to contribute to civil society. This level of understanding is important whether one is Christian, Muslim, or Atheist– we face many crises as a species, and these divisions do not serve us well in the search for answers. Mr. Metcalf’s ‘Us vs. Them’ polemic rings hollow on this and another level. He stands zero chance of communicating with the people he so viciously attacks. So what’s the point?

Couldn’t have put it better myself!

I remember Archie comics fondly as a kid. Although the storylines were always predictable and innocuous, I had a deep appreciation for such familiarity. Looking back, however, I couldn’t help but notice that the quaint vision of life in America was a product of the pining for simpler times, when teenagers worried about who they would take to the big dance, and drug, violence, and sex was never an issue. This picture, of course, is simply a fantasy. Still, it was a wholesome alternative to the sometimes overly violent and complicated works of other comic books, like Spiderman or X-Men.

What I never realized however, was in the 1970s and 80s, the characters were featured in a number of fundamentalist Christian books under the publication of Spire Christian Comics. The strict doctrine of Christianity was encouraged, with the troop involved in issues surrounding evolution, drug addiction, and even a little anti-establishmentarianism (they didn’t like hippies too much, it would seem).

Although tame compared to the far more sophisticated methodology of indoctrination the religious right is employing, I’ve never been comfortable with cultural icons presenting their own personal beliefs as undeniable facts to their young and impressionable audience. In the comics, the faithless always appear morally bent, while the sheen of the Archie characters come off as annoyingly ‘holier-than-thou’. In one of the comics, Archie even opens up a Christian bookstore in a western themed scenario, so students at the local schools will be delivered from the evils of evolution. To quote Betty: “When they took the Bible out of school, more and more problems came in” [emphasis theirs]. Of course, such a thing is only a tragedy to those who maintain a strict adherence to the cosmogony of the Bible, rather than the rigorous theories of science.

If you don’t feel annoyed, try to imagine for a moment that instead of telling children about the love Jesus has for them, Archie and friends were informing their loyal readers that Mohammed was the last prophet of God, and praising the joy of the Qur’an.

It’s rather convenient that these comics have faded into obscurity, thereby failing to taint the image of the poster-boy for Americana, Mr. Archie Andrews. On a side note, this isn’t the first time the characters have faced a bit of controversy. In 2003, a small theatre production was issued a cease and desist order for their satirical play involving the Riverdale gang. The play was to have Archie coming out as gay. The franchise felt such a play would tarnish the wholesome image of their title character. It’s strange how they never opposed the idea of Archie Andrews the ‘Creationist Bible Thumper’…Strange indeed.