Obligatory Newsweek "Think Piece" Crapping on Some Christian Doctrine in Time for Easter.

It's as regular as the swallows returning to Capistrano.

This year Newsweek takes on the most Easter of Easter doctrines - Resurrection.

It's Easter—that most pleasant of springtime holidays—when children stuff themselves with marshmallows and stain their fingers with pastel dyes. In reality, of course, Easter is about something darker and more fantastic. It's a celebration of the final act of the Passion, in which Jesus rose from his tomb in his body three days after his execution, to reside in heaven with God. The Gospels insist on the veracity of this supernatural event. The risen Lord "ate barbecued fish [Luke] and walked through doors [John]," is how a friend of mine, an Episcopalian priest, puts it. This rising—the Resurrection—remains at the center of the Christian faith, the narrative climax of every creed. Jesus died and rose again so that all his followers could, eventually, do the same. This story has strained the credulity of even the most devoted believer. For, truly, it's unbelievable.

What would a good "think piece" be without polling data?

Despite the insistence of the most conservative branches of all three Western religions on resurrection as an incontrovertible fact, most of us are circumspect. The number of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has dropped 10 points since 2003 to 70 percent, according to the most recent Harris poll.

70%????  That's fantastic!  You generally can't get 70% of Americans to agree that the sun rises in the morning!

And, of course, we have to have pop bible lit-crit:

Resurrection presented credibility problems from the outset. Who, the Sadducees taunted Jesus, does the man who married seven wives in succession reside with in heaven? The subtext of their teasing is obvious: if the resurrection is true, as Jesus promised, then in heaven you must have your wife, and all the things that go along with wives: sex, arguments, dinner. Jesus responds in a typically cranky way: "You just don't get it," he says (my paraphrase). "You are wrong," he said in Matthew's Gospel, "because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God."

Good thing the author stopped there because she would have shocked the average Newsweek reader with the rest of the story where Jesus reveals that Heaven is really Hell because there is no S-E-X in Heaven.

Ultimately, the author puts the idea of resurrection under her critical scrutiny and it comes out wanting because "How does God put bodies—burned in fire or pulverized in war—back together again?"

What a moroon.