PrintAugust 22, 2010
Atheists and Anti-Semites
There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. - Blaise PascalChristopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great (the book) and Bill Maher's Religulous (the film) are hysterical -- not hysterically funny, just frenzied. If you didn't know better, you might think that rabbis and priests were pursuing these guys through the salons of Georgetown and the gin mills of West Hollywood, threatening them with bris, baptism, or brimstone. They protest too much. Indeed, they seem to be self-anointed missionaries for nihilism. The Hitchens book and the Maher film are just two examples of a post-9/11 cultural bloom that seeks to argue that Islamic barbarisms are logical outcomes of the ignorance and oppression of Judaism, Christianity, and related Imperialism. The premise of their arguments is moral equivalence -- that is, all religions are equally evil -- wellsprings of barbarity. Maher is also a self-styled expert on moral courage. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, while bivouacked at ABC, Maher...(Read Full Article)
