In response to an earlier article entitled “Is the Beast a Very Silly Atheist?” by Bleeding Cool founder Rich Johnston, writer JD Church scrutinizes the initial claims:

Beast makes his position on the matter clear. Except it’s complete nonsense. Not for anyone reading the book, but for anyone living in the Marvel Universe.

This is a man who has served on the Avengers with Thor, God Of Thunder […] And even if his godlike status can be dismessed [sic] as a powerful alien race, he’s also served with Valkyrie […w]ho can transport people back and forth from the land of the dead. Even if Beast doesn’t believe it exists[, h]e’s had his soul cleansed by Illyana’s sword. Even if he’s not meant to have a soul.

Bleeding Cool commenters responded in droves, and Church offered his own thoughts parsing Beast’s views (published, to Johnston’s credit, also at Bleeding Cool):

Partly we are dealing with two subject that sometimes go hand in hand. Those being skepticism and atheism. While not mutually exclusive, one can inform the other. […] Arthur C. Clark was famous for saying (among other things) that advanced alien technology would be indistinguishable from magic. But I think that hold true for just about anything we don’t completely understand.

Perhaps the Beast’s response to the “supernatural” and as-yet-scientifically unverifiable could be held side-by-side with fellow superhero, genius, and skeptic Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man; toward the end of the Avengers versus X-Men series and in the wake of Fear Itself, Tony found himself open to new questions and matters of faith. In a CBR interview with writer Kieron Gillen, he says, “There’s a hunger. He wants to know about the thing that he’s been avoiding previously. He’s driven. This is him being driven. It’s like he’s found a new wing in the library and he wants to read all the books.”

(Is it also worth noting that the Beast’s captions may refer to his younger self’s worldview, perhaps no longer shared by his older, modern self?)