A brief history of blasphemy

In a recent episode of the hit animated TV show The Family Guy, a white-bearded God invites Adam and Eve to take a load off under any tree in the Garden of Eden. Except, he says, for the one shading his porn collection. A few hundred years ago, the very idea of God as smut connoisseur would likely have led to the slow death of everyone involved with the show. The most likely reaction today is laughter on the living room couch. In contemporary North America and Western Europe, there are countless examples of blasphemy, variously defined as the gross contempt of God or irreverence toward the sacred.