Ross Douthat tries to run an argument that’s always puzzled me — the idea that we can infer the truth of theism from the fact that theism is widely believed:

am, however, consistently puzzled by the resistance, whether it’s among my friends and neighbors or the Sam Harrises of the world, to any consideration of the notion that religious experience might be like most other widespread human experiences – which is to say, a response to something that’s actually out there. [...] As soon as homo sapiens developed consciousness, we became conscious of (what seems to be) a numinous reality interwoven with our own; it’s just possible, surely, that we started experiencing the numinous because it happens to be real.

The trouble, I think, is that one thing just about everyone should be prepared to agree about is that most peoples’ religious beliefs are false. As you can see in the handy chart I stole from this site, there’s just too much diversity in religious belief. Whatever the right thing to believe is, most people don’t believe it. At best, you can combine the Christian and Muslim blocks (and the trivial number of Jews) to form a very slight majority in form of some form of monotheism. Even here, though, the folk practices of many Catholics (and unless I’m mistaken, Orthodox Christians and Shiite Muslims as well) has strong polytheistic elements. It’s only a kind of rhetorical overreach on the part of atheists — pitting “religion” versus “not religion” as the key disagreement — that creates the appearance of a large majority in favor of “religion.”

There’s clearly a significant human predilection for not-supported-by-science beliefs of various sorts — in the existence of a god or gods, astrology, fortune-telling, alien visits to earth, the healing power of crystals, etc. — but there’s no particular convergence of these beliefs on anything in particular. Meanwhile, on many of the particular question you might ask about religious subjects, atheists are going to be in the majority. Like most people on earth, atheists don’t believe that Jesus Christ died for man’s sins. Similarly, just like most people, atheists don’t believe that Muhammed was Allah’s greatest prophet or that the Hidden Imam will return. And, again, like most people atheists don’t believe that you’ll be reborn on earth after death in a new body.

I think Kevin Drum is misconstruing the force of the point Lawrence O’Donnel is making here. Kevin’s right to say it doesn’t make sense to say that only veterans are allowed to have opinions about questions of war and peace (democracy and all that) or that only veterans are allowed to favor military deployments (since most people aren’t veterans, this would just mean the military could never be deployed), but I don’t think that’s what’s at issue here. There are two different sound points in the chickenhawk neighborhood.

One is just that it’s a way of calling bullshit on people’s insistence that doing this or that is vitally necessary to the security of the country and the world. If you say “The war in Iraq is going downhill, but it’s not hopeless yet and it’s vitally important for America to succeed — failure is not an option” I think it’s fair to ask in response why you’re not putting any skin in the game. Are you volunteering? Encouraging your son, daughter, or little brother to volunteer? The interns working in your office? The college students you might be invited to address on this or that topic? If you’re not doing any of those things — if you don’t think you could look a 20 year-old kid you care about in the eyes and tell him with a straight face that it’s vitally important for the world that he sign up to fight — that seems like a good indication that you don’t really believe the things you claim to believe. As with any hypocrisy gambit, the reverse might be true — you might just lack the courage of your convictions rather than lacking conviction — but it seems likely to me that you’re probably just fronting convictions you haven’t really thought-through.

The other thing is just the annoying rhetoric of strength, courage, and toughness. Actually punching some dude who hassles you on the street is genuinely tougher and braver (though possibly also dumber) than trying to back down and de-escalate the situation. Advocating that someone else punch some dude who hassles you on the street is not. It’s just an opinion. Maybe a right one, maybe a wrong one, but no braver, tougher, stronger, or more courageous than giving the reverse advice. Similarly, volunteering to fight “Islamofascism” in Iraq requires significantly more toughness than does writing blog posts about how troops should be withdrawn. But blogging about how more troops should be sent to fight “Islamofascism” in Iraq isn’t a tougher, braver thing to do than is blogging the reverse.