God and Derb

John Derbyshire's description of his religious beliefs correspond pretty closely to mine. I find my faith fading away. In terms of religion, I grew up as an Episcopal, just as Derbyshire was raised as an Anglican, so it's doubtful that I could ever become a fanatic fundamentalist. I find it more and more difficult to say that I believe that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead. As far as religions go, however, I think that Northern European Protestantism is a beneficial one. It's certainly preferable to Islam. It's possible that religion is necessary for civilization to develop. Every major civilization of which I am aware has been religious to some degree. However, I don't think the substance of any religion can compete with science, which is not perfect but describes the world in a much accurate and useful way.

It's interesting that Derbyshire begins his essay by asking himself if he is a Christian, the same question that caused Andrew Sulivan to charge Hugh Hewitt with holding an inquisition. Derbyshire answers the question with openness and honesty.

The Inquisition!

I listed to Hugh Hewitt's interview of Andrew Sullivan regarding Sullivan's new book. Although I have read Sullivan's blog for years, I can't believe how deranged he sounds. He describes the interview as an "inquisition." Personally I found Hewitt's questions pretty reasonable. Is it so unfair to ask if someone is a Christian? After all, Sullivan throws around the label "Christianist" all the time. It seems to me that establishing definitions at the beginning of an interview in order to understand where someone is coming from is perfectly reasonable. Immediately, however, Sullivan started accusing Hewitt of bad faith and of asking questions he knew the answers to in order to trap Sullivan. It sounded extremely defensive and paranoid to me. I'm not sure why Sullivan is so obsessed with Christian fundamentalists. Christopher Hitchens who is an atheist and very outspoken in his hositility to religion displays no alarm at Christian fundamentalists. It's funny but when the Iraq war started and Hitchens and Sullivan appeared together on C-Span I identified more with Sullivan because he presented himself as a man of the right and Hitchens as a man of the left. Now, I find Hitch much more reasonable and sane. My religious views are probably closer to Hitchens at this point. All religious belief seems quite irrational to me although there seems to be a strong human need for some kind of spirituality. It's also revealing the Hewitt has Hitchens on his show so frequently. Would a Christian fundamentalist and Christianist give a podium to an outspoken atheist? Hewitt, it seems to me, is the best example of what Sullivan means by Christianism - someone Sullivan dislikes or disagrees with. I only listen to Hewitt because he has Hitchens, Mark Steyn, and James Lileks on his show. I haven't heard anything to suggest that he's a closed minded religious bigot. Also although he is upfront about his beliefs, he is quite willing to give other views a fair hearing. For example, after he attacked a blog post by Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post, he had him on his show for several hours. Hewitt can be fairly criticized for being too uncritical of the Bush administration but it's a paranoid delusion to call him an inquisitor or a Christianist.