I got an email from a reader, asking me a question. (As far as I can tell, it’s not in response to any particular piece I’ve written.) With their permission, I’m posting their email here, along with my response to it. (I’m keeping the reader’s name private, per their request.)

Do you think that it’s possible for an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person to be a Christian? Or do you feel that no reasonable, intelligent, and well-informed person could possibly believe in traditional Christianity. Just curious.

Short answer: Yes, I think it’s possible for an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person to be a Christian.

But I don’t think Christianity is an intelligent, reasonable, or well-informed position.

Intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed people can be wrong. They can be profoundly wrong. They can be stubbornly wrong. They can be deeply attached to wrong ideas, with contorted and absurd rationalizations for their wrongness. They can be wrong about big, important things. In fact, I would argue that this is universally true: every intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person is bone-headedly wrong about something. Being an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person doesn’t mean every opinion or idea or belief you have is intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed. You can be an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person, and still have dumb, unreasonable, ill-informed ideas.

And yes, I think Christianity is one of these. I think all religion is one of these.

Can an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person be a Christian? Obviously. Many of them are. It would be absurd to claim otherwise, entirely counter to all the available evidence.

But that doesn’t mean it is intelligent, reasonable, or well-informed to be Christian. It isn’t. There is no good reason to think Christianity is true; there are lots of good reasons to think it’s bunk. And the same is true for every religion.

So what do the rest of you think?