Back in 2020, I declared the death of Scientific American as a serious journal of actual science.  It seems much of the rest of world of science journalism is follow suit.

This:

Nature used to be a prestigious journal, and deservedly so. Now it is, as with so many elite institutions, still prestigious, but undeservedly so. It, along with its subsidiary Nature-Springer, which publishes hundreds of scientific journals, is no longer concerned with the quality of the science it publishes and focuses on pleasing the commissars….

Springer-Nature’s journal dedicated to obstetrics is called “Pregnancy and Childbirth,” and it just hired a woman with no research experience and credentials from an online university to be the Lead Editor. She has not published a single research paper, and the thesis she wrote to get her diploma mill Ph.D. was entirely on racism, not pregnancy or childbirth.

When a member of Springer-Nature’s Editorial Board brought this fact up and pointed out that her sole qualification was that she was a black woman, they relieved him of his duties.

UGH.  I have personally run into similar sorts of things in far less prestigious circumstances.  Science is supposed to be the ultimate expression of objectivity, and yet here we are with things happening that are anything but objective.  It is almost a cliché – like a bad villain plot from a bad movie and the hero is the only guy that has not come under the political spell of the villain.  In really bad ones he villain wields some sort of hypnotic or drug-based power over those whose minds he, or she, has clouded.  But in this instance so many otherwise quite rational people have gone for along for the ride quite willingly and with eyes wide open.  What is it, I wonder that has driven us to take such a entirely misdirected intellectual journey?

As I have watched this phenomena, I cannot help but wonder if we, as humans, do not come with some innate need to atone.  Thus, several generations having been raised on the notion that slavery was the deepest evil ever committed by man, even if they are not personally responsible for it, feel they must atone for it, regardless of the cost.  This phenomena is too counterproductive, and irrational, not to be rooted in something very primal.

Paul said to early Christians in Rome:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

I wonder if this inbuilt need to atone is not a reflection of that, but we have, as we so often do, turned it  into something destructive when God intended it to be constructive.  That which was intended to drive us into God’s arms is instead being filtered by us into something moving us away from Him.

And thus we learn the final lesson about atonement in Christianity – we cannot do it.  Though atonement be demanded, humanity screws it up, every time.  That is one of the deep beauties of the Christian faith.  The God that demands atonement, also provides it.

The issue is not whether atonement is necessary – it is.  The issue is how is it provided?  Only Christianity gives and answer that works.