More on Kristof

There's a great discussion of Kristof's column over at Atrios, which contains this quote:

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -- H.L. Mencken

contributed by Tresy.

Then there is this email I received from Matt:

"I was brought up to respect other people's religions (although nobody ever explained why...)"

Here's why:
"We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other." -- Jonathan Swift

Or, one could argue quite easily, if UBL and his crew had grown up respecting other people's religions, Al Qaeda would not exist.

The problem with Kristof's article is that he jumps from disdain for *evangelicals* to disdain for *Christianity*, in the same way that incautious warbloggers might jump from condemning Wahabbism to condemning Islam.

It's an uncommon lapse in Kristof's usually solid intellectual rigor; perhaps he still has mixed emotions about once dating a girl from a Pentecostal denomination, and isn't quite ready to say that, although she was bright, she was also a follower of a religion that makes no freaking sense.

At any rate, he's wrong, but not entirely so--and I respectfully submit that you are making the same error (failing to distinguish between radical and mainstream) in reverse, if not to quite the same degree.

Very good points.

One serious flaw, pointed out by many over at Atrios, is that Kristof fails to differentiate between "evangelicals" and "fundamentalists". This is a nuance I failed to account for. I'm sure someone's god will forgive me.