Robert P. George

The essence of paganism is idolatry: the self-aggrandizing worship of false gods in place of the God of love who is Creator of the universe and Lord of Life. How can we know that an idol, a false god, and not the true God, is being worshiped? I submit to you that there is a foolproof test: False gods always demand the blood of innocents. A pagan culture is always, in the end, a culture of death.

Where the innocent and just are slain, there the god being worshiped is not the God of Israel, the Lord of Life, but rather Moloch in one or another of his protean disguises. Paganism is a permanent threat. The worship of false gods is a constant temptation.