EDITOR:

This is a letter in response to James D. Langteau.

While I think what happened to the young person, being raped, while being photographed is horrible, I don't think it comes from a lack of God in ones life.

The easy thing to do to, especially while pushing a religious agenda would be to say that the people who did this and the people who did nothing to stop it didn't have god in their lives.

What ever happened to people being evil, and other people being indifferent? Does throwing in the god card AFTER the fact really show that being religious would have helped these people?

Modeling ones life after an ideal or institution that killed and maimed and tortured millions...all for not believing in the same invisible man in the sky that they were told to believe in doesn't sound like something people should be modeling their lives after.

People will say "But that was a long time ago", I say it doesn't matter. Anything founded on years of indoctrination and forced worship under pain of torture or worse has no legitimate grounds to preach morality to people.

There are people who need to believe in god, that's fine, I don't begrudge them their need to have something.

But when you say that people would do certain things because of the absence of god, it becomes a little comical and hard to believe.

When you say,"This is a sad commentary on how society has changed into a godless self-centered place where even children have no conscience when confronted with the most reprehensible and vile behavior", what do you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about how your religion was founded? Subscribing to a belief system that is based upon thousands of years of behavior as bad or worse than the poor girl received, makes no sense. Its like saying, "As long as we are where we are today, what happened in the past didn't really happen"

Do you think for the people who were subject to torture and murder all those years ago deserved it? They were subjected to it for not believing in the joke of a book called the bible. The girl was just as innocent as the people who suffered for not believing in god. You can't deny it or explain it away with something as silly as "gods will" or "god gave man the ability to think....and this is what man did".

Leave the religion in the church. It does nothing but add clouds to an already cloudy society. People don't need "god". People need accountability.

Ryan Bernard

Gladstone