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By Senior Editor John H. Farr
It started with a reader sending me word over the weekend about a bizarre article posted at a site offering "Christ-centered web hosting." The main thrust of the article is that Apple, founded by long-haired anti-Christian pagans, is undermining the true faith by promoting evolution. (The "Darwin" code-name is relevant here.) Over the last 48 hours I have been contacted by numerous Mac users who are genuinely worried by the tone of the article. Should you be concerned? A perusal of the article itself will send most people into stitches or into shock: Is this man for real? Well, yes he is. Dr. Richard Paley is involved with "Objective: Christian Ministries," an anything-but undertaking if I ever saw one. His arguments are nothing new -- when I was a boy, I encountered West Texas preachers who insisted that the world really was created in 6 24-hour days -- but singling out Apple is a different twist, all right. These believers have always lived among us. What is different today, and what I think we should be worried about, is the granting of civil authority to fundamentalis by appointing them to judgeships or executive-level jobs in the federal government. This poses the radical danger of giving religious bias the force of law, a dynamic propelling much of the international terrorism we are supposedly fighting against. Our current Attorney General comes to mind: Believing that religious principle supersedes state law, he has tried (unsuccessfully) to moot an Oregon law on assisted suicide. The current sociopolitical climate has even emboldened politicians like House majority whip Tom DeLay (Rep.- Texas) to admit that he helped lead the effort to impeach Bill Clinton because the former president held an incorect "worldview," i.e. was not sufficiently pious for the congressman's taste. Is the Constitution to be ignored because it is a secular document? The conmingling of religious and political motives is of course quite cynical and not even concealed, for the most part: Witness the pair of waving American flag GIFs prominently displayed atop the "Free Christian Web Hosting" site's home page. (Incidentally, the sign-up form does not have an entry field for religion.) I assure you my intention here is not to offend anyone. But the current administration seems insufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the danger of allowing the establishment of what for lack of a better term I will call an "American Taliban" (Talibaptists? Talibush?), and that is definitely worthy of your concern. Apple, however, can take care of itself. UPDATE: 12:49 p.m., MDT -- My esteemed colleague at Applelinks, fellow senior editor Charles W. Moore, is I am sure genuinely saddened by the ideological excesses portrayed at the Web site that started this discussion. In response, his latest article on the same subject describes Dr. Paley's site as an anti-Christian hoax. Possibly. But my first reaction would have to be that I spent too much time in Sunday schools listening to how little black babies in Africa were going to burn in hell because they hadn't been baptized to find anything the least bit unbelievable about the site in question. Your mileage, as Charles says, may vary. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. :-)
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