Marc Chagall

NEW YORK—This is a bad time of year for atheists. So much so, they are showing signs of desperation. In the cesspool that is Uncle Sam’s capital, an unusual Christmas message began appearing last week on the sides of buses and trains: “NO GOD?…NO PROBLEM!” Two hundred and seventy of these ads have gone up, paid for by secular groups in cities around the country. Similar signs are being placed on buses and billboards in New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as foreign Sodoms and Gomorrahs such as London, Toronto, and Montreal. I say so what? Sometimes I think the anti-Christian forces take Christ more seriously than do most nominal Christians. Atheists are jealous of the Christmas season. While we have Jesus and the Jews have the prophets, what do they have? Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris—as motley a group as those who voted for Qatar in exchange for three million pieces of silver. 

Once upon a time, religion was equated with ignorance and superstition, which eventually gave way to science, fact, and reason. Secular elites banged the drum loudly, exhorting us to acknowledge that the world was better off without Christ and God. Unfortunately, they got it the other way around. At the turn of the millennium it was pretty hard not to notice that the 20th century, when these buggers prevailed among the pseudo-elites who rule over us, was the worst one yet for death and destruction and out-and-out state murder. Denouncing God and in turn Jesus has turned us into savages, which in turn has made for a spiritual quest by most decent people in the Western world.

Mind you, the natural reaction to Christ is to reject him. He said so. He later predicted his own death and told his followers they must expect persecution. His bitterest enemies weren’t atheists, however: They were the most religious men of his age, the Pharisees. (Today’s Pharisees worship Wall Street and Big Oil.) Paul Johnson once wrote in these here pages that “No wise man and no great artist leaves out God.” The all-knowing Paul wrote that it is far more difficult to prove that God doesn’t exist rather than that he does. All the poor little Greek boy knows is that whenever I’ve met scientists who had something to do with space, they all say that the more knowledge they acquired, the more they believed in a higher being. The same goes for some great musicians I’ve known. The awe over Schubert’s great works goes hand-in-hand with the kind of gift only God can bestow. His last three piano sonatas, which he wrote while terminally ill at age 31, are proof that this was a command coming from the top, at least according to Maestro Dimitri Mitropoulos.