Oo, wicked

Here’s a headline that gives a bit of pause.

Atheist Group to Rip Up Bible Passages on Saturday

Mixed feelings, eh? I mean, I’ve got no compunctions about the Bible being a holy book or anything, but on the other hand, book ripping isn’t really all that different from book burning. But read the details.

An Orange County, Calif. atheist group plans to put on a demonstration Saturday afternoon in which they will rip up sections of the Bible that they deem “immoral.”

Though they won’t be tearing pages straight out of a book, members of Backyard Skeptics, OC’s largest atheist organization, plans to rip up photocopies of the Scriptures on the Huntington Beach pier.

Brilliant! They found a way to express their disapproval of significant Scriptural passages, without giving in to the temptations of censorship and oppression. They claim that they’re not out to offend anyone (yeah, right), but that they’re hoping to educate people. Don’t apologize, guys—outrageousness is what gets their attention. If Rush Limbaugh went out of his way to avoid offending people, we’d be referring to him as “Rush who??”

And it looks like this stunt is already producing some very educational results. See below the fold for the Christian response.

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The cure for free-floating anxiety

Writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, one Scott Stephens seems to have found the perfect remedy for free-floating anxiety: pin it all on atheism.

And so, without the guiding concept of a “Common Good” our social life is governed by the anomie of private interests, the inscrutable demands of “well-being” (which for us has come to mean little more than health, safety and pleasure) and the vicissitudes of mere fashion.

There are few things today more fashionable, more suited to our modern conceit, than atheism. In fact, far from being radical or heroically contrarian, the current version of atheism strikes me as the ultimate conformism.

Translation: now that the unbelievers are gaining influence in society, it’s time to try to make majority opinion sound like a bad thing—no matter what Christians may have said (and may still say) when they were the majority.

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