As a raging heterosexual, I confess that the notion of same-sex attraction has always been a puzzle to me.

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Life is good. I have a wonderful wife and family. My older son will graduate from Columbia this week; my daughter is completing her sophomore year at Fordham, and my younger son his first year at Columbia.

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I've come to believe that doubt is not the antithesis of faith. It is, rather, an essential component of faith, because if matters of religion or belief were all verifiable by rational means, what's the role of faith? My favorite passage in the New Testament is the statement from the father of a young boy. "I believe," he tells Jesus. "Help my unbelief."

All of this renders chimerical the attempts to "vindicate" Christianity by rational or empirical means -- so-called "scientific creationism," for instance, or the "intelligent design" movement. I decided long ago that I would not allow the canons of Enlightenment Rationalism be the final arbiter of truth. I elect to live in an enchanted universe where forces are at play beyond my ability to comprehend, much less explain, them.

I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Christopher Hitchens and his fellow secular fundamentalists – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al. – are having a field day. And who can blame them? Terrorists claim the mantle of God in peddling their destruction. Girls and young women undergo genital mutilation for “religious” reasons. The government here in the United States is headed by a man who claims to be called by God – and whose administration will very likely be remembered as the most morally bankrupt in American history.

No wonder Mr. Hitchens is in high dudgeon.

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