CT Blue

I have never before read a column by Russ Douthat, the columnist presently occupying the conservative slot at the Times. But I decided to do so today, since my wife told me that one of the people she follows on Twitter said his column today was the stupidest column he’d ever read. I couldn’t resist.

He was right. The column is called The Case for Hell, which right away tells you that we’re entering into a delusional state of mind.

Apparently, fewer people than ever, even the religious, are able to believe that a just God consigns the vast majority of people to eternal torment for disobeying some arbitrary rules, or for failing to accept the Lord Jesus into their heathen hearts.

Some of us might consider this a sign of progress, even if we put aside the larger questions raised by evidence-free religious faith. Not Mr. Douthat. He is, after all, a conservative.

Of course, he does not appear to be overly concerned with whether there is, in fact, a Hell. He does, however, argue that people should believe in Hell, apparently whether it exists or not.

Why?

Doing away with hell, then, is a natural way for pastors and theologians to make their God seem more humane. The problem is that this move also threatens to make human life less fully human.

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

If your having trouble following this argument, read the rest of the column. It only gets more incoherent from there. It appears, from what I can glean from Mr. Douthat’s muddled theological musings, that he is making the rather old and ultimately debasing argument that our moral choices are meaningless unless there is some otherworldly reward or punishment awaiting us. Why that makes such choices more, rather than less, meaningful is unclear. If I perform an act in hopes of a reward or in fear of punishment, why am I any different than a trained seal?

To the extent he is arguing that there must be a Hell, his argument is so intellectually flimsy that it boggles the mind. Hell must exist because we face moral choices, and there must be consequences to us for the choices we make. The earthly consequences we experience are simply not sufficient, for some reason he does not explain. It follows, therefore, as the night the day, that an after life of eternal torment must, or at least, should await us, so whether it exists or not, we should believe in it, or at least encourage our inferiors to do so. This is philosophy that makes Paul Ryan’s economics look rigorous.

Now Mr. Douthat has every right to try to match Scott Adam’s level of religious insight. But the New York Times, I thought, does not run cartoons, and I actually spend good money to buy it. I deserve better than this, even from the obligatory conservative. I know they’re in short supply, but there must be a conservative out there who is capable of some sort of rational thought. This may not be the stupidest column ever, but If there’s a hell for bad columnists, Douthat is bound for the center ring.