Ned Flanders mot nye ateister

Ingen lett match, men i det lange løp vinner selvsagt Ned med armene på ryggen.

Sjefsøkonomen i The Economist - John Micklethwait - og Washington-korrespondenten Adrian Wooldridge er ihvertfall ikke mye i tvil.

In 1994 Mark Noll published a wonderful little book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which lamented the absence of an evangelical intelligentsia. But since then the scandal has diminished somewhat, not least because of the work of a remarkable group of evangelical historians such as Noll. Evangelicals are finally recognising the virtue of C.S. Lewis's observation that “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.” The Conference on Christianity and Literature has a membership of more than 1,000 and publishes a journal and monographs. The Society of Christian Philosophers is one of the largest sub-groups in American philosophy. Books & Culture is an evangelical version of The New York Review of Books.

In his own way, Flanders is not a bad advertisement for the advantages of his creed. He has a spectacular physique despite apparently being in his sixties (by contrast Homer, beer-bellied and saggy-eyed, is a walking heart attack). When Ned's Leftorium shop for left-handed people totters on the edge of bankruptcy, the Springfield community, led by Homer himself, rallies around to save him.

True, he has an absurd smile - and he smiles a lot. But then he has a lot to smile about. There is his conviction that his soul has been saved. There is Homer. And there is the fact that the world is headed in his direction, not Nietzsche's. Somewhere in Hell, or whatever purgatory is reserved for European thinkers, a moustachioed German is looking up at The Simpsons, hitting his head and saying: “D'oh!”

Ingen tvil om at Ned på mange måter er en taper. Men det er få ting som er mer bibelske enn at taperne vinner, enten de er saktmodige, fattige i ånden eller bare de siste som ble de første.

Selv om de ikke skulle klare å skille mellom seleksjon og selviskhet.

For ikke så si kvantemekanikk og kverulering.

Boken er i det minste bestilt.