Today I am compelled to stand in defense of my faith. I'm not surprised that a couple of Christian students signed up for a class, expecting to hear what they already know and encountering an intellectual challenge instead. I won't address that. I am addressing a person who brags about being as objective as an alien, and then proceeds to insult religion in general, and Christians specifically.

It's not Christianity's goal to "enslave." Nobody enslaved you, you allowed yourself to sour after being hurt. Christianity is staunchly free-will oriented. Apparently, as it happens in any religion, somebody has steered you wrong; but you are the one who didn't have enough backbone to turn the situation around. Your "enslavement" argument doesn't fly for those of us who use our heads. You are extremely un-intellectual, you have become the weak party. Faith in the spiritual things, and the organizing of that faith into true religions takes impressive amounts of contemplation, debate and good old suffering. It takes superhuman strength to forsake the pursuit of the American Dream, to live among lepers, drug addicts, AIDS patients and even us college students, in order to relieve their suffering. In case you aren't looking around here on earth, that's what Christian laymen, priests and religious orders are doing. While you are stargazing, wishing for aliens, someone near you needs comforting.

By the way, Mr. Fleckenstein, as a Roman Catholic who has lapsed before, I also don't buy your statement that since you were once Roman Catholic, that you "understand" the religion. You do not understand, and therefore do not love, the Church. It takes courage to seek the truth about something. We as a Church have made huge mistakes, and still do. So the Church is human -- that also means she is not inherently evil. So whatever you got upset about, why don't you be a man and forgive us? Even in your bubble of self-servitude, you can't find a place where we are not. You can't escape the fact that Christianity has delivered more goodness than hurt, and nothing you or anybody else says is ever going to stop it.

Wisen up. You are saying nothing new to us, and you are enlightening nobody.