Paganes, Ignorantes

According to Johann Hari, repeating a favourite line of the New Atheists, Christianity will go the way of the worship of Zeus and Thor. But modern Paganism is a purely twentieth-century confections which does in fact worship Zeus, Thor and all the rest of them. The very similar systems and customs generically called Hinduism are also going strong in the West, and not least in Britain. So the religion that defined our civilisation and to which the great majorities of our populations continue to profess at least nominal, and therefore at least aspirational, allegiance (ticking the box amounts at least to expressing a wish to believe) would seem to be an old dog with plenty of life left in it.

Hari needed to be put up, not exactly against, but nevertheless alongside a Catholic with a bit more theological training than Ann Widdecombe, who could have explained that just as only Christianity could have produced or can ultimately sustain the conceptual world necessary for the emergence and conduct of natural science, and just as only Christianity (and specifically Augustinian illuminism, which, being Augustinian, can only mean full visible communion with the See of Peter and all that that entails) could have produced or can ultimately sustain both the rational and the empirical methods in philosophy, so Christianity (and specifically the Thomist understanding of Natural Law, which, being Thomist, can only mean full visible Communion with the See of Peter and all that that entails) can indeed explain why Hari, an atheist, can appreciate and teach forgiveness, turning the other cheek, and so forth. I can think of dozens, scores, hundreds who could have done that. So can the BBC.