In bad faith

A real mess your religion is making of all this, an atheist friend said acerbically to me the other day. I did not riposte that it was not my religion exactly – we were talking about Iraq and the UnIslamic State1 – because I know that he expects me, as a believer in God, to be an apologist for faith in general. Instead I contented myself with replying that there is bad religion and there is good religion.

But how do you tell the difference, I wondered afterwards. More to the point, …