Leviticus 16 instructs us on how to properly atone for our sins… it involves two goats and a bull, and specific rituals for sprinkling blood. Trust me. It also describes the role of one of those two goats, known as the scapegoat; this goat basically gets all of our sins cast upon it, then is chased out of town into the wilderness. Et Voila! Sin-free town, God’s happy, the people are happy, everything is good again… kinda sucks to be either the goat or the bull, but someone has to pay.
Today, the scapegoat serves a similar function–we blame all our mess on the scapegoat, and vilify it and hope to run it out of town. We are much more civilized now, though; we no longer use a real goat. Now, we blame the atheists.
Seriously. The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger blames the atheists for the economic situation.
It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.
Can’t blame him, really. Actually analyzing the situation would be difficult. Blaming people like me is so much easier.
Financial instability
On this year’s global scale
Can’t possibly be understood
In every last detail
By educated modern types
From Harvard Business School
With economic data points
And science as their tool.
The modern world’s a scary place
With bankruptcies and such;
The thoughtful man suggests it needs
A bronze-age mystic’s touch.
The Wall Street Journal’s Henninger
Just makes me want to laugh:
Let’s fix the economic mess–
Just sacrifice a calf!
The atheist—a bogeyman
And whipping-boy du jour,
The one who dares to say that work,
Not prayer, must be the cure—
The atheist must take the blame
So take them by the throat,
Lay all our sins upon their heads
Then sacrifice that goat!
As always… Buy my book! Buy my book! Buy my book!
H/T PZ
Sorry, I can’t help it…That opposites attractIs an established factOr at the very least a well-known theory.It’s not just “common sense”,We now have evidenceAs Cuttlefish writes like Denise O’Leary!With that out of my system, I will chime in: Buy the book, Buy the book, Buy the book!
Considering how everyone on Wall Street was laying prayers on a golden calf, it seems their attempts to get a holy intercession have failed. So, rather than admit their imaginary friend doesn’t exist, atheists get picked on. Nice. Very nice. It’s a stupid world we’re stuck living in.
I read that article and then reread it with Jew replacing atheist. Go-go, Klan rally.
I can’t help but read the ‘buy my book!’ bit as Jay Sherman from ‘The Critic’ episode. Awesome.
Tara J–I don’t think I saw that episode, but now I can’t hear it in any other voice–even my own!