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American Idols
 How
can this country survive much longer, when the
younger generation is so appallingly ignorant? Only half of them can name the
first book of the Bible, or any of the four Gospels.
 Worse
yet, in a way, I’m not sure
they can even read the New York Post! They all know who the
current American Idol is, but a shocking number are unable to identify Amy
Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco. No use trying to converse intelligently with such
people about Antony and Cleopatra.
I have my own
problem with the Post. My eyes are so weak now that without
my reading glasses I can’t tell whether it still supports Israel.
I’ll have to start getting the Braille edition, I guess.
Today’s
atheists baffle me too. If they don’t believe God exists, why do they
hate him so much? That doesn’t figure for me.
I mean, I
don’t believe in Zeus, myself. But for that very reason, I don’t
hate him. (Or, to be safe, Him — some people in this multicultural
society of ours are pretty sensitive about capitalizing pronouns.)
I’ve always
found it hard to hold grudges against deities that don’t even exist.
When, as a kid, I didn’t believe, I couldn’t even work up a head
of steam against the one wise people tried to tell me did exist.
A tolerant fellow
Christian just told me he thinks atheists are entitled to their opinions. I told
him I think they’re entitled to my opinions; I’ve heard enough of
theirs! Don’t even get me started on the subject of that fool Darwin.
The world would be a lot better off if he’d taken up astrology, like
Attila the Hun.
At least astrology is
a science with a long and respectable pedigree. Not that it can’t do a
lot of harm in the wrong hands, I suppose. But so can physics. It
wasn’t astrologers who gave the world the atomic bomb.
Why don’t
the atheists get angry at Zoroastrians, by the way? Talk about
troublemakers. I used to live next door to one of those people. Never again.
Of course, with the Internet, you can’t get away from them now. And
they always seem to know how to find Yours Truly. I guess that’s what
I get for answering their messages.
![[Breaker quote for American Idols: Atheism and decline]](2007breakers/070524.gif) One
of the pretty clear lessons of history is that
Zoroastrianism tends to lead to war in the Middle East. It’s so obvious
that I’m surprised that the atheists still haven’t caught on to
it. Why do they always give Ahura Mazda a pass when they’re
inveighing against gentle Jesus? Do they assume nobody will notice? Well,
some of us are keeping score.
They accuse us
Christians of being Manicheans, for example, but they seldom say a word
against the actual Manicheans. How fair is that? If you ask me, it’s
the same old tired story: atheism talks, polytheism walks. Watch the
treatment of the Catholic Church on public television, and you’ll see
what I mean. I’ve had it up to here with these people.
I wish I could say I
don’t have a god in this fight, but I do: the only one today’s
atheists seem to care about, the only one they can never forgive. Read the
Psalms, listen to Handel: he is the king of glory. The hatred of the atheists
bears perverse witness to him. So does their persecution of his believers,
which is so unlike their indifference to the old pagan gods and idols.
Atheism is tolerant,
they say. Maybe I’m missing something. We never seem to hear about
the sins of organized irreligion, still active in China and Cuba. In the West
it’s called “separation of church and state.”
As Charles
Baudelaire observed, “Satan’s cleverest wile is to make us
think he doesn’t exist.” It has come to sound quaint to speak of
the diabolical, no matter how evident it is.
Most atheists now
prefer to call themselves agnostics, meaning that even if there is a bare
possibility that some sort of God exists, he can’t speak to his own
creatures, so we should ignore any messages from him.
And religion is all
right, they say, as long as it makes you feel good. Just don’t try to
impose it on others by acting as if it’s really true.
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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