The column I've written over the past year that attracted the most reader response was one last December about Peter Singer, the Princeton professor of ethics who sees no ethical problem with polyamory, bestiality, necrophilia or some kinds of infanticide.

 Readers frequently asked questions concerning past and future: How did the individual called by The New Yorker today's "most influential" philosopher develop such beastly positions, and how should conservatives fight his influence?

 First, the past: Although Singer would like to think that his conclusions are the result of pure intellectual labor, his family history is worth noting. He and President Bush were born on the same day, July 6, 1946. But Singer did not have a future president as a dad and a U.S. senator as a grandfather: Both his grandfathers (as well as one grandmother) had recently died in Nazi concentration camps.

 The grandmother who survived observed Jewish dietary laws before the war, but in 1946 said she would no longer do so, because, "If God allows such a good man as my husband to die, I don't have to follow His laws."

 Singer told me that he grew up "very aware of the Holocaust," learning from his parents and his parents' friends, and was "impressed early on with my grandmother's argument: How could there be a God who would let the Holocaust happen?"

 This is what is called theodicy, the problem of evil, and smart people have thought it through for centuries, with some coming to atheistic conclusions and others coming to a belief in a God who is smarter than even the smart. Singer chose atheism and developed an evident pride in his ability to reason out every matter.

 When I noted to him that some of the most intelligent English-speaking philosophers of the 20th century have been adult converts to Christianity, and that other highly intelligent people as well have come to believe that the Bible is God's Word, he stated that "an intelligent person could not come at (that understanding) based on impartial critical analysis. People might have psychological needs."

 But here's the rub: If he says that people who become Christians have psychological needs, how about people who become atheists? It's not easy for a smart person to conclude that Someone is infinitely smarter than him. Don't many atheistic intellectuals have a psychological need for autonomy? Continued...