Sunday, October 20, 2013

Believing in the Devil?

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some waves recently when he affirmed his belief in the devil. See:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/10/13/Scalia-and-the-devil/UPI-76941381649400/

Many media commentators saw Scalia’s statements as a big joke. Yet how wrong was he?

I’ve been around enough to say I believe in the existence of evil. I’ve seen, once or twice, persons who seemed possessed by a spirit of evil.

When one studies history—the French Revolution, for instance—the idea of human evil becomes more tangible.

The question is whether or not evil is a personality, or the attribute of a personality. Or a living personality.

Is the notion of the devil childish? Or rather, is not the failure to believe in the evil in man and mankind—call that evil Original Sin, or call it the devil—the true childish viewpoint?

(As Scalia says, far more intelligent men than anyone alive today believed in the existence of the devil. Yet today’s intellectuals—nothing if not narrow-minded and arrogant—have all the answers. At least in their own uninquisitive minds.)

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