[steve-b]

Victorian project (which persists to this day) of doing away with Christian dogma but trying to keep Christian morality intact is doomed to failure. Not because Christian morality can’t be approached rationally by nonbelievers of good will, but because without the lived experience of a religious tradition it will never be anything more than an abstraction, an arid intellectualism, something that gets followed when following it is easy to follow and abandoned as soon as the going gets tough.

That argument is irrelevant because the simple fact is that belief does not prevent morality from being abandoned when the going gets tough. If anything, it leads to morality being debased into a justification for evil, which turns out to be worse than simple abandonment.

For example, it was "tough" to stick to "Thou shalt not covet", "Thou shalt not steal", and "Thou shalt not kill" when applied to the local Jewish moneylender. Voila -- a "Christian" justification for reneging on debts and running out or killing the creditor was readily found.

[Little Ray]

That's pretty silly.

The unforgivable behavior toward Jewish money lenders was rooted in a religious law against usury. The Jewish money lender was "immoral" because he practiced usury and that "justified" the horrid behavior toward them.

[Dumb_Ox]

That argument is irrelevant because the simple fact is that belief does not prevent morality from being abandoned when the going gets tough. If anything, it leads to morality being debased into a justification for evil, which turns out to be worse than simple abandonment.

"Prevent" is not the same as "hinder", which is the main point Douthat was going after.

For example, it was "tough" to stick to "Thou shalt not covet", "Thou shalt not steal", and "Thou shalt not kill" when applied to the local Jewish moneylender. Voila -- a "Christian" justification for reneging on debts and running out or killing the creditor was readily found.

Christianity is constantly being berated for simultaneously inspiring too much guilt and not enough guilt. Any stick is good enough to beat a dog.