Coulter on Christianity

Ann Coulter's column this week is worth reading. I completely agree with her that the response among media elites to Brit Hume's advice for Tiger Woods has been bizarre. I'm constantly amazed that journalists - presumably educated people - can be so brazenly ignorant of Christian theology and completely unequipped to discuss it intelligently. I understand how it happens of course, but it's still just inexcusable.

This also raises a question: Why do elites (intellectuals, journalists, etc.) tend to be irreligious? It's well established that societies become less religious as they become more educated, and people who like to feel smart often assume this happens because education somehow "disproves" religion. They believe that religion is a crutch to be cast away once the mind is strong enough to reject irrationality. But I think this is clearly wrong.

Education is not the enemy of religious conviction. Vanity is. "The smartest people in the room" are less likely to be religious precisely because they enjoy being "the smartest people in the room." Their intelligence doesn't bar the acceptance of religious claims, their self-conceit does. Religious devotion (and particularly Christian devotion) requires a healthy dose of humility - which is wholly inconsistent with feelings of intellectual or moral superiority.

In other words, any correlation between education and non-religiosity exists, in my opinion, only because education and self-conceit fit together so nicely - and self-conceit is the natural enemy of religious devotion. It's impossible for someone to be too smart to believe in God, but very tempting to decide that such a belief is intellectually beneath you. And I think this describes most modern secularists.