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Happy Easter!
 It’s nearly Easter, and
the atheists, God bless them, are writing bestselling books to prove the good Lord’s
nonexistence. Truly, they have their  reward.
One of the most
famous of them, a British professor named Richard Dawkins, says atheists
are generally smarter than Christians. I wouldn’t doubt it.
After all, Of course atheists
are clever! People who spend a lot of time justifying themselves generally
are. If you devote your waking hours to seeking reasons not to believe,
you’ll find plenty of them. Darwin sold a lot of books to clever people
like that.
Then there is the
argument from comparative religion. Religions are a lot alike, they
can’t all be true, so isn’t it probable that they are all false? By
that kind of reasoning, you can prove not only that we don’t know who
wrote Hamlet, but that it was never written at all.
Jesus was just like a
lot of other religious leaders? Such as? Do other religions have prayers like
the Our Father? Did the ancient Greeks ask Zeus to “forgive us as we
forgive others”? Did the Aztecs pray like that? How many other
religions command their votaries to rejoice, be of good cheer, have no fear?
(“Trust in Poseidon”?)
And many other
religious figures, we are told, have performed miracles every bit as
impressive as those attributed to Jesus. Really? Did they cure blind men and
cripples while assuring them that their sins were forgiven?
![[Breaker quote for Happy Easter!: For my old friend, Pastor Bruce Hays]](2007breakers/070405.gif) And
did they, even after they had died (and
risen again, it goes without saying), make converts who would die for what
they had taught? Did any of them ever give a speech like the Sermon on the
Mount? If so, where can I find a copy?
For that matter, did
any of these impressive religious teachers, who seem to have been very
numerous, match Jesus in what has been called his “command of the
moment,” making memorable retorts, still quoted centuries later, to
enemies trying to trap them with trick questions? Have any of their reported
ad libs endured as permanent moral teachings, like “Whoever among
you is without sin, let him cast the first stone”?
Come to think of it,
the atheists could strengthen their case somewhat by producing the prayers
of other religions to show how much they resemble, or even surpass,
Christian prayers. Why don’t they? Just asking. But I have my
suspicions.
Just as President
Bush says Islam is a “religion of peace” because he assumes
that all religions are pretty much alike (and like Christianity) by definition, so
the atheists seem to assume that all religions share the features of
Christianity they detest. I wish they would go all out and really press the
analogies — honestly, not selectively.
When you point to the
rather horrid regimes run by atheists in the twentieth century, you can
count on the atheists to disown them, on the pretext that men like Stalin
were the “wrong” sort of atheists because they were just as
“dogmatic” as Christians. With people who argue this way,
you’d better cut the deck before letting them deal the cards.
They’re saying that empirical evidence is inadmissible — except
when they want to use it.
If Hitler and Stalin
believed in Darwinism, that doesn’t count against Darwinism, because
they “abused” it. You get the impression that Darwinism can be
safely applied only by people who practice Christian morality — but of
course that such people are mostly atheists. In other words, atheists make
better Christians than Christians do. Well, at least they are smarter.
How can God be both
good and omnipotent, when there is so much evil in the world? I can’t
answer this one, and it has tormented believers so deeply that the
Scriptures themselves ask it many times. It’s known as the Problem
of Evil. I can say only that it’s trumped by the real mystery, the
Problem of Good.
This was posed, in a
way, by a woman whose name I forget: “If there is no God, whom do we
thank?” Only a woman would think of that. And by the way, if there is
no God, whom do we thank for creating woman?
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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