At the Dawn of Wacky Wednesday

Yesterday the mainstream media ran an article by some "expert" who asserts that Moses was high as a kite on drugs when he thinks he saw the burning bush and when he received the Commandments.  As the weary world staggers awake to find out who Fr. Bozek says he is today, blogger Mark Shea has a helpful post to put it all in context.  Add the Archbishop to the first part of Chesterton's quote below, and add some schismatic priest in the second part, and voila:

Truly Scientific Explanations for the Truly Credulous


Chesterton remarks: "The modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say."

I'm always reminded of this sage observation every time some "expert" pops up in the media to inform us of what "really" happened in Scripture. Of the making of real Jesuses and Moseses there is no end. Just as one expert has conclusively guessed proven that his cockamamie concatenation of theories demonstrates that Jesus never existed at all, some other expert conclusively guessesproves that his cockamamie concatenation of theories demonstrates that Jesus was an alien, a Hindu, a magician, something else. A year ago, Anthony Sacramone did us the kindness of collating just a few of the Latest Real Jesuses the press has run off after over the years:

• Jesus was a woman.
• Jesus was a space alien and is buried in Japan.
• Jesus survived the crucifixion and is buried in Kashmir.
• Jesus was a Buddhist.
• Jesus was a Muslim.
• Jesus was a Mormon.
• Jesus was a magician.
• Jesus was a Gnostic.
• Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman solider.
• Jesus never existed.
• Jesus was never executed.
• Jesus was married and had children.
• Jesus was a social revolutionary when he was not a mere Mediterranean peasant.
• Jesus was an itinerant visionary whose real teachings exist only in distorted, fragmented form.
• Jesus was insane.

People seem never to tire of this. Last year, somebody found out Jesus was buried in the family plot--until they found out he wasn't. A couple years before that we discovered that skilled fishermen who knew the Sea of Galilee like the back of their hand were too stupid to tell when somebody was walking on ice. Before that, we learned that St. Paul was converted by ball lightning and/or epilepsy.

So with a burbling cottage industry like that, and so many fantastically credulous journalists ready to be skeptical of Scripture and of nothing else, it goes without saying that another "expert" will find a ready-made audience when he announces that Moses (who just recently did not exist at all) not only did exist, but was completely blitzed out on drugs.

Few people are more utterly gullible than a hardened skeptic.