[Ed note: Our point/counterpoint with David Klinghoffer and Sahotra Sarkar on Ben Stein's Expelled provoked a heated reaction from readers and some regular writers. Jay Michaelson's follows below, the first of several more likely to be posted soon.]

"All of a sudden, there was hope in my heart I'd see my father again."

Thus says one of America's most influential religious leaders, of the moment when he became religious: it was at his father's funeral, and the presiding minister had just said that death is not the end, that there is an afterlife. The boy was only ten. And he grew up to be Tim LaHaye, evangelist and co-author of the massively best-selling Left Behind series.

This is why it is so difficult to talk about religion in America today, why we fight wars about it, why we condemn and even kill one another about it: because it gets us in our guts, and stays there. Religions do offer theological doctrine, but what they really offer is solace, love, sanctity, and value -- all of them inchoate, all of them dear.

Really, why should anyone care so much about the age of the Earth, the parting ofKitzmiller v. Dover, 2005: A Christian Bush-appointed judge finds ID to be an unscientific sham the Red Sea, or the resurrection of Christ? Do we really suppose that the most ardent of religionists are committed to ontology and history?

No --- these doctrines are only important because of something else, and that something is the deep desires to which religion caters. Fundamentalisms and orthodoxies may say they are about the content of theological propositions, but the reason it's impossible to argue with them is that their adherents have so much at stake in their being right that they'll say or do anything to make it all work out. What's at stake? If the Torah isn't literally true, then something in my life is wrong. If Jesus didn't die for my sins, then I am not okay.

This is how religion works. As those in the Jewish community arguing for "deep, immersion experiences" are coming to realize, religion works by grabbing us where it counts. This is why religion makes so much sense at funerals -- because we need it.

The trouble is that, for many people, these intense feelings become invisibly translated into beliefs and opinions. Israel's religious right has intense religious experiences, and associates them with notions of chosenness, and holy land. America's religious right has intense religious experiences, and associates them with Biblical literalism. The Islamic world's religious right has intense religious experiences, and associates them with keeping the umma pure of corruption and decay.

This is why arguing about "Intelligent Design" is so pointless: because those who "believe in it" (notice the locution) do so for reasons totally unconnected to science, evolution, truth, and logical inquiry. They are committed because they think religion is really, really important, and it's at the core of their lives. The debate is not about bacterial flagella, evolutionary biology, or any of the other details. It's about a terrified minority, afraid that society is slipping away from all it holds dear.

Just imagine the grief of a young boy whose father has died. And imagine the hope, the consolation, when that boy is taught that at the Rapture, he'll meet his dad again. All of a sudden, Biblical inerrancy is no longer a hermeneutical proposition; it is necessary for the dearest of dreams to be true.

Closer to our own tradition, how many of us have felt, at one time or another, that if the perfect edifices of Biblical and rabbinic law were to crumble, that not only they but our very souls would lose structure and coherence? Surely, this is the great appeal of Orthodoxy, and the great lack of more liberal Jewish movements: that it all makes sense, even if it doesn't. That there is a point, a design, a truth at the core of life. Liberal rationales --- that the commandments are a path toward god-consciousness, or ethical behavior, or social justice --- just don't have that kind of power. And if it can't make you cry, it's not religion.

This is why otherwise intelligent people like David Klinghoffer make absurd, ridiculous claims that fly in the face of the scientific revolution --- you know, the folks who brought you the airplane, the computer, and the artificial heart.

On the facts, there simply is no doubt, and no controversy, whatsoever. Evolution is among the most successful explanations of facts that has ever been propounded. And "Intelligent Design" has no alternative to it --- it simply says that it's incomplete, and therefore, the incompletion means there must be some "Designer." Big surprise to no one: that Designer is probably God. (Admittedly, it could be space aliens, some ID proponents say.) This is not a new argument; it's been around for hundreds of years. And it's as false now as ever before.

As documents uncovered in the Kitzmiller case show, the Discovery Institute is a well-funded front for those seeking to re-Christianize America. Klinghoffer and folks like him are basically Jewish Uncle Toms. I'm only surprised that Jewcy gave him a platform.

Klinghoffer's argument is as vacuous as Intelligent Design itself: that because Hitler made use of Darwin, Darwinian theory is morally suspect. Last I checked, Hitler also made use of automobiles. Indeed, he based a lot of ideas on militarism and machines; does that mean technology is morally wrong? Should you turn off your computer right now?

Social Darwinism, Hitlerian and otherwise, was a misapplication of scientific rhetoric --- just like Intelligent Design. Its claim was that we can derive moral truths from natural facts, and that is false. You might as well try to decide what music is good by what sounds most like birdsongs, or base your taste in food on how rabbits like to eat.

Darwinian theory simply points out that we, like every other life form on the planet, are part of the natural world. It does not imply anything about how we ought to behave; it does not create a should from an is. Indeed, one could make an entirely Darwinian case for conservative morality: precisely because we are animals, we need strict rules and codes of conduct to keep us from killing each other. This is what the right says all the time. It's the left that says we can trust people not to be awful.

Yes, the great irony is that the only Social Darwinists left today are...you guessed it, Klinghoffer's allies on the political right, who blame poor people for being poor (morally deficient, perhaps) and who advocate less of a safety net to catch them when they fall. (To be clear, I'm not accusing Klinghoffer himself of this position; I have no idea what he thinks about this issue.)

But all this is beside the point. As the Kitzmiller case conclusively showed, these ID guys aren't interested in scientific reasoning. They're using scientific language as a wedge to get Americans to be more religious. That's what this "debate" --- which is not a debate, but which the ID partisans want to convince us is a debate so that we'll be fair and hear "both sides" --- is really about. There are not two sides of this issue, any more than there are two sides to the question of whether the Earth is flat.

I am a religious person, in love with God, and a mystic. As my readers know, I think spiritual and contemplative practice makes us better people, and makes life worth living. But when those spiritual states become wedded to ideology, they become dangerous. Already, a third of our country believes itself to be at war, primarily with Islam, but also domestically, in what used to be called the "Culture Wars." America does not need less reason and more religious passion. The Discovery Institute's wedge strategy is exactly the wrong prescription for our nation.

Three hundred years ago, John Locke wrote his Letters Concerning Toleration inspired by the English Civil War. In the shadow of that conflict, Locke argued that because religion so stirred up the sentiments, and because its claims could never be objectively arbitrated, religion should have no role in shaping public policy. It's just too contentious, Locke said, providing what would become one of the core theories for the Enlightenment's separation of church and state. Locke, of course, was right.

When Rav would visit the city of Dardishir, he would announce, "Who will be mine for a day?" And when Rav Nachman would visit the city of Shachnetziv, he would announce, "Who will be mine for a day?" (Yevamot 37b)

What is the Jewish response to the Eliot Spitzer affair?

Predictably, most of our leaders have joined in the chorus of disappointment, condemnation, or just plain embarrassment at the ex-governor of New York, whose brilliant political career was felled by a single (okay, octuple) transaction with a prostitution ring. Certainly, it's a shonde. But if we were more careful with both our sources and our values, we might not rush to judgment.

First, the sources. The fact is that prostitution is a Christian, not a Jewish, sin. LookAshley aka Kristen for the prohibition in the Torah, and you won't find it. On the contrary, you'll learn of Judah visiting a prostitute -- without condemnation -- as well as of concubines and polygamy. (Cultic harlotry is banned by Deuteronomy 23:18-19, but not secular prostitution.) Even the Talmud is ambiguous; sometimes it appears to condemn prostitution and illicit sex of all kinds, and other times it tells of lusty rabbis visiting prostitutes and otherwise circumventing our expectation of chaste monogamy.

In fact, it was expected that men would have sex outside of marriage. It wasn't exactly celebrated, but it wasn't condemned either. In short, within the gendered context of Jewish law, it's a peccadillo.

Of course, Jewish law is very concerned about adultery. But "adultery" meant sex with another man's wife. As in the ancient British law from which the English term is derived, it was "adultery" in the sense of "adulterating" a man's bloodline -- and the offense was against the other man: abusing his property, confusing his lineage. The concern is about patriarchy, not sex. As usual, sex is problematic not in itself (indeed, you won't find any clear condemnation of heterosexual sex, by itself, in Jewish law) but because of its context.

The source of the religious disapproval of sexuality is not the Hebrew Bible, but the New Testament. Paul does condemn prostitution, along with all other forms of non-procreative sexual expression. And Paul reframes sexual sin in terms of carnality itself. The Jews? Not for another thousand years.

So much for the texts. What about contemporary values?

Some progressives today argue that prostitution is against Jewish (and universal) values because it objectifies and victimizes women, as well as supports an international slave trade. Certainly, these claims have merit, as does the observation that Jewish law is sexist and asymmetrical, banning for women what it permits for men.

But while all these concerns are important, are they really what's motivating our outrage today? Sure, progressives dislike prostitution for feminist reasons, but Christians hate it for Christian ones. And think about it: what really brought Spitzer down? Was it the hypocrisy? The objectification of "Kristen" the call girl? Or -- let's admit it -- the sex? Condemning Spitzer for feminist reasons creates an unholy alliance between the pre-modern Right and the post-modern Left.

Indeed, there are good Jewish arguments for seeing the Spitzer case as indicting society more than the philandering ex-governor.

We live in a sex-crazed society, and we are crazy because of repression. Few cultures in history have enforced the monogamy ideal as we do. Jewish culture was polygamous for most of its history, approved of concubines, and tolerated harlots. European and American cultures usually looked the other way at prostitution, regarding it as a (male) private vice. Many non-Western cultures had elaborate systems of concubines, harems, brothels, and so on, before Christianity told them it was evil and sinful. We are, in short, an anomaly.

And we are equally anomalous in our puerile approach to sex. Our media cultureSt. Paul: Chairman of the No-Fun Committee saturates us with cheap, vulgar sexuality, objectifying to women and pandering to men. Surely, if Spitzer is a hypocrite, our media culture is even worse: titillating us with the endless commercialization of sex, then wagging its moralistic fingers at someone who buys sex for money.

If Judaism celebrates healthy, robust sexuality, then it must condemn all three of these trends: the Puritanical repressiveness, the puerile vulgarity, and the pious hypocrisy.

But there is a fourth and final Jewish reason to hesitate before condemning the ex-governor. Yet again, a conservative party which defends thieves, crooks, and warmongers has taken down a liberal because of sexual peccadillos. No one cheered Spitzer's fall more than the crooks of Wall Street -- including those who just benefited from the multi-billion dollar corporate bailout of Bear Stearns. Just like no one cheered Clinton's fall more than those same crooks, and their war-mongering friends who embroiled us in Iraq.

If Jewish values mean anything, they mean that senseless war is worse than a blowjob, and that billions of dollars of thievery and greed are worse than a visit to a whore.

Of course, none of this is to excuse Spitzer's violation of his marital vows, or his own hypocrisy -- he portrayed himself as an ethical crusader, and so perhaps was right to resign. Nor is this an argument for legalized prostitution or open marriages. Questions of sexism, privilege, and economics are too serious for simple answers.

But our culture's rush to judgment, its phony piety, and its outrageous moral hypocrisy have neither textual antecedent nor philosophical basis. Not in the Jewish tradition anyway. Quite the contrary. While Spitzer may be a moral failure and a hypocrite, many of those who condemn him are worse.

And Moses Said: i am a golden god!People have sure leapt on the story about how Moses may have been under the influence when he went up Mount Sinai, but while it is interesting to note the importance given to one possibly psychoactive plant—acacia—in the Bible, there are a lot of gaps. Israeli Researcher Benny Shanon—author of one of the best phenomenological studies of the psychedelic experience—has suggested in an academic article (and a resultant slew of radio interviews) that certain plants native to Sinai contain the same psychoactive ingredients as the Amazonian shamanic plant medicine ayahuasca (described in a recent Jewcy article by yours truly). Whoa, Nellie—here are three simple reasons why the "Moses on Drugs" theory is nothing to get high about:

1. Most (secular) Biblical scholars say the Exodus never happened anyway; it was a legend told by one group of Canaanites to create a distinct identity for themselves. Shanon has taken the weird position that the Exodus did happen, though it was not supernatural. Ergo, some explanation is needed. Ergo, ergot (or DMT).
2. The "similarities" between the ayahuasca experience and Mount Sinai are slim and stretched. Yes, ayahuasca leads to visions and spiritual epiphanies. It also leads to apparent encounters with spirits (forbidden by the Torah), complex visual revelations (mostly absent in the Torah, but present in Ezekiel and Hechalot mysticism), and a lot of nausea (curiously absent in the Torah's narrative). Worse, many popular press reports on Shanon's article have lumped the psilocybin and ayahuasca experiences together, when actually they're very different.
3. What is all this trying to prove? That Moses was "merely" stoned? That Western religion came from a psychedelic experience? (Terrence McKenna said that decades ago.) Or, conversely, that psychedelics lead to God? (Ram Dass got that one.) None of this is new: I've seen articles suggesting the knei bosem in the sacred incense is cannabis, and McKenna has an interesting riff that the tree of life is a mushroom. Is this supposed to "explain" the Exodus narrative like low tides "explain" the parting of the Red Sea? Why is such an "explanation" useful? Isn't it easier to just assume the whole thing is a legend?

Related: New Psychedelics Are Transforming The Future Of Spirituality

Hey, everyone needs a hobby: Woody Allen also plays the clarinet

For fans of Woody Allen, the elephant has been in the room for fifteen years now. We remember it's there, right? That Allen took up with his quasi-stepdaughter, Soon-Yi Previn when he was 56, she 22? That he had nude photographs of her? That Mia Farrow accused him of molesting their adopted daughter (a judge found the charges "inconclusive")? Sigh. We -- especially those of us who are, despite it all, fans -- remember.

And yet, for someone whose mature films were once so autobiographical, this notorious, unavoidable aspect of Allen's personal life has seemed absent from his artistic production. On the contrary, many of the films of the last decade and a half (and there has been roughly one each year) have been fluff, like the caper Small Time Crooks, the musical Everyone Says I Love You, the mob farce Bullets Over Broadway -- and those were the good ones. This has led many critics to conclude that Allen's introspective phase is over. The old man is going through the motions.

A closer look at Allen's late films, however, belies that claim. In fact, Allen's new film, Cassandra's Dream, is but the latest in public confessions of moral failure and deep ethical ambivalence. It's in code, but if we look closely at this series of Allen's films -- and this article will have spoilers for Match Point, Cassandra's Dream, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Scoop -- we can see they are exactly about "the elephant in the room."

The first, and best, of the late films is 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors. (Notice that, if Farrow's accusations were at all true, this was exactly when Allen became inappropriately interested in the minors living in his home.) That film introduced the central question of the late work: whether there's anyone minding the moral store, whether criminals ever get their comeuppance. Crimes and Misdemeanors also explicitly blends tragedy and comedy, a formal choice that reflects its ethical content. For flawed people, does life end tragically (as it ought to) or comically (as it oughtn't, but often does)?

Don't worry, Sam: You've got a friend who can loan you some eyesIn Crimes, the contrast is stark. Martin Landau, in perhaps the most brilliant performance of a brilliant career, plays Judah Rosenthal, who contracts to kill his wife  mistress (murder is the quintessential immoral act in the late films), and gets away with it. At first he is wrought with guilt, but eventually, the guilt passes. Meanwhile, Woody Allen's character, a good man, loses everything, and the film's moral conscience, a rabbi played by Sam Waterston, goes blind.

In the film's climactic scene, Rosenthal tells his story, in third person. He’s guilt-ridden and believes God is monitering him. “Little sparks of his religious background which he'd rejected are suddenly stirred up,” he says. He’s driven almost to confess. “And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted... he's Scot-free. His life is completely back to normal.’’

Knowing now what we didn't know in 1989, it's not a huge stretch to see Allen reflecting on his own situation in these words. Did he commit a crime? Or just a misdemeanor? Who knows. Maybe all he did was fantasize about a much younger woman who was effectively, if not legally, his stepdaughter. But perhaps there were pangs of guilt already. And yet, as Alan Alda's smarmy character says in the film, "comedy is tragedy plus time." Time passes, and Oedipus gets over it. The tragic, ethical sense of what ought to be gives way to a comic, aesthetic play of what just is.

Flash forward to 2005's Match Point, widely regarded as Allen's return to form, and featuring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Chris, a tennis pro who, by chance, falls in with a wealthy playboy and ends up marrying his sister Chloe -- all the while lusting after the playboy's fiancee Nola, played by Scarlett Johansson. Eventually, Nola and Chris have an affair, Nola becomes pregnant, and refuses to have an abortion. Chris is trapped: he depends on Chloe's family for his job, his life, his dreams of making it in the world. And so he ends up killing Nola (and a neighbor) in cold blood.

Case in point: Pigeons plus time equals creative pun Chris is almost caught when he fails to destroy a piece of evidence -- a gold ring that bounces on a railing like a tennis ball bouncing on the net. But luckily for him, the ring gets picked up by a drug addict, substantiating rather than undermining his alibi. He escapes. It's a comedy. Cue jazz music and white-on-black credits.

As in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the bad guy gets away with it, though this time the emphasis is less on his cool lack of conscience than on his dumb luck.

The same themes are repeated in Cassandra's Dream. In it, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play two working class English brothers, Ian a striver like Match Point's Chris, and Terry, down on his luck. Their wealthy uncle promises them all the money they need -- if they kill a business associate who's about to testify against him. Eventually, the brothers do the deed. But then Terry spirals downward, consumed with guilt, while Ian represses the guilt and gets on with fulfilling his ambitions.

That haircut is a crime AND a misdemeanor: Farrell and McGregor Finally, when Terry is about to crack, Ian plots to kill him before he confesses. But at the last moment, Ian repents, and instead of poisoning Terry, merely punches him. In the ensuing fight, Terry accidentally kills Ian, and then kills himself out of remorse. It's a tragedy. Cue brooding Philip Glass music and white-on-black credits.

Cassandra's Dream is perhaps even darker than Match Point, which was even darker than Crimes and Misdemeanors. In Crimes, the comedy unfolded despite the murderer's remorse. In Match Point, remorse is irrelevant. In Cassandra, it's downright harmful: the tragedy is precipitated precisely because of Terry's last-minute pang of conscience. If he'd been more cruel, there would have been a happy ending.

The lesson is clear: comedy is tragedy plus time -- unless you brood about it.

In this light, even some of Allen's lesser works begin to take on a new light. For example, Scoop's murderous villain is only discovered by a comic mix of supernaturalism and shtick (and Allen's character pathetically dies as he tries to save the heroine). Melinda and Melinda revisits the comedy/tragedy dichotomy, suggesting that luck determines the outcome much more than our own actions. And so on.

So, the elephant is in the room, and in the frame. By now, "Woody and Soon-Yi" have become a fixture on the New York cultural scene; we're no longer shocked. But whether there was misconduct early on, or only unseemliness, Allen has not overlooked the obvious, which is that he is a 72-year-old married to a 30-year-old who wasn't quite his stepdaughter but almost sort of was. Allen is unpunished, but perhaps unforgiven as well, at least by himself.

Let me out!: The elephant plots its escape On the surface, Allen's agonizing agnosticism is squarely at odds with traditional Jewish conceptions of justice, Allen's obvious foil. This is the "religious background which he'd rejected." But Allen hasn't rejected its most salient feature, which is not the pat answer that God sees everything, but the wrestling with the problems of justice and evil in the first place. Judaism is a religion of Job, not just Sunday School, and Allen's extended meditations on the presence or absence of moral order are the essence of the Jewish ethical conscience.

We all know that God does not punish the wicked -- at least not in ways we can see. And yet, we who were raised in the Jewish tradition still experience Jewish guilt, itself both comic and tragic. Is there really no moral order in the world? Is remorse an ally or an adversary? Will there be an accounting at the end, or is religion for suckers? Is it better to remember the past, or let it go?

Allen has now worked out at least three different permutations of these questions in his late films, each one with a different sense of pathos, a different perspective on the mystery. Of course, all this is speculation. Maybe there's really no big deal about the Allen/Previn marriage. Maybe Allen couldn't care less. Or maybe that's what he's trying to figure out.