Suffice it to say I can’t remember the last time I received so many differing emails about a column. Lots of people agree, lots of people disagree. Lots of people hated it, lots of people loved it and folks within each group disagree wildly as to the reasons why the reacted the way they did.

I’m not going to clutter the Corner with any more emails about this. But let me just offer a scattershot of responses rapid fire. I don’t think I’m making up my own religion (hint my daughter won’t be attending the Synagogue of Jonah); I do believe that morality is transcendent and have never said otherwise; I do not think religion is trivial or silly. I think people seeking to logically diagram today’s column missed the point a bit.

I think you can be un-religious and moral and I think you can be religious and immoral. But, I think the odds of you being moral are greatly increased if you are religious. Even religious people within the same tradition can disagree about what is or is not moral. Except in the most glaring circumstances we figure out what is moral by weighing history, text, arguments, etc and make our best judgement. There can be no, or very, very few perfectly moral acts, because we live in an imperfect world.

Yes, the soup can was a false idol and I can understand why that analogy annoyed people. My only response there is that I am perfectly comfortable with the argument that we will know fairly quickly if someone’s religion is based upon a false idol by the actions that flow from his form of worship. For example, we can tell that the Thuggee cult was a bad faith largely from the fact that it required its adherents to murder people. But also because they liked mint jelly. I am making up the part about mint jelly, even though I find it disgusting and I think all moral people would be compelled to agree with me.

Lastly, yes my argument was a secular argument, not a religious one. In other words, I think it’s perfectly legitimate and reasonable for people to be offended or simply to disagree on theological or religious grounds. The whole point of being concerned with morality is that it affords some purchase for us all to discuss things. I am not qualified to discuss the finer points of theology except as an amateur in the strictest sense.