In an interview given by her to National Review Online, Melanie Phillips says a fair bit by way of lamenting irrationality and the repudiation of reason. She emphasizes the value of ‘follow[ing] the elementary rules of logic’. In view of this, I find the following answer of hers problematic:
LOPEZ: What does a self-described “agnostic” care about God?
PHILLIPS: You don’t have to be a religious believer to understand that if religion – more specifically, the Hebrew Bible and the Christianity that built upon it – underpins Western civilization and the codes of right and wrong – putting others above yourself, freedom and equality, and belief in reason – that form the bedrock of that civilization, then eroding or destroying that religion will erode or destroy those virtues and the civilization they distinguish.
But if as an agnostic Melanie herself can subscribe – as it is safe to assume she sees herself as doing – to these codes of right and wrong, these virtues, then religion isn’t their indispensable basis. She might, I suppose, reply here that she and others like her (agnostics, possibly also atheists) can rationally support the values forming the bedrock of Western civilization while doing without the aid of religion, but other people, just as a matter of sociological fact, do need that religious aid. But then isn’t she appealing to the need for an irrational – or at least non-rational – form of assistance while lamenting the repudiation of reason in other forms of which she disapproves? That would have been my next question had I been conducting the interview.