Politics: Of Religion

Sometimes he is kind of a tool, but Nicholas Kristof has a good column today about the rising tide of American religious fundamentalism, though he doesn't say it in so many words. The gist of his piece covers the fact that a huge percentage of Americans believe in certain pieces of religious dogma which signal a movement away from rationalism and closer to what I like to call 'nutjobism.' The nut graf comes at the end:

But mostly, I'm troubled by the way the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches alike are withering, leaving the scholarly and religious worlds increasingly antagonistic. I worry partly because of the time I've spent with self-satisfied and unquestioning mullahs and imams, for the Islamic world is in crisis today in large part because of a similar drift away from a rich intellectual tradition and toward the mystical. The heart is a wonderful organ, but so is the brain.

Read the whole thing.