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That is, I'd rather say something like this: even if we grant that some people have done some nasty things in the name of Christianity, and that the absolutist character of some Christian teaching may even encourage people to act in nasty ways—if they disregard other teachings equally intrinsic to Christianity that would restrain them—nevertheless Christianity offers us reconciliation with God, and teaches us how to live eternally in His presence and in charity with one another. And this is a trade–off worth making.

Of course, Dawkins, Harris, Christopher Hitchens and their kin would deny that Christianity does this—if forced to. But they rarely if ever bother when acting on their own. They assume that Christianity is false, and then, empowered by that assumption, they go on to try to demonstrate that it is also bad. This is, not incidentally, a version of what C. S. Lewis called "Bulverism," after Ezekiel Bulver, the imaginary founder of an unfortunately common mode of debate: "Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and amp;hellip; our age will thrust you to the wall."

As I have said, I doubt most of the claims made about the perfidy of religious belief in general, or monotheism, or Christianity in particular. But I wonder whether in responding to those claims of perfidy we sometimes neglect the prior claim, the claim of falsehood. After all, if the best that can be said for the Christian faith is that it has produced or helped to produce good things in this world—even the finest goods of, say, modern medicine—then it does not have a very strong claim upon us. It may be merely a kind of stepping stone, a way of understanding the world that has been useful but may now safely be abandoned for something better. Or perhaps the best things that it has produced are inferior to the best things that would be produced by another governing philosophy. Christianity only matters vitally and permanently if it brings what it fundamentally claims to bring: the redemption of humanity and the deliverance of the whole Creation.

Alan Jacobs teaches English at Wheaton College in Illinois; his history of Original Sin will be published in Spring 2008 by HarperOne. His Tumblelog is here.

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