SOUTH PORTLAND — Where is Lawrence Spivak when you need him?

Lawrence Spivak was the founder and longtime panelist-host of television’s longest-running program, “Meet the Press.” Described in the Christian Science Monitor as a man of “fearless independence” and “utter fairness,” Spivak would have been appalled by current host Chuck Todd, who recently suggested that he agreed with a letter to a Kentucky newspaper that said “good people” support Donald Trump because they’ve “been trained since childhood to believe in fairy tales … show me someone who believes in Noah’s Ark and I’ll show you a Trump voter.”

For Todd, this was the Daily Double – in one quote he could bash both Trump and believing Christians, prompting the conservative website Newsbusters to quip, “If it’s Sunday, it’s contempt for religious people.”

Such is the effect of the half-century assault by secularists and universities on the intellectual respectability of religious belief. Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias writes that whereas imparting “knowledge and virtue” was once the goal of the academy, “the hallmark of modern education is skepticism.” And worse. Leftist academia has birthed “deconstructionism,” which denies that words have fixed meanings; gender identity confusion, and the “pronoun revolution,” which replaces “he” and “she” with “ze” or “zir,” or any words the individual wants to create. The words of English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge come to mind: “We have educated ourselves into imbecility.” Thank you, Harvard Square.

It may be true that most Noah’s Ark believers are Trump supporters. But it’s also likely true that most atheists are not, and atheists have their own fairy tale – a universe that came into existence ex nihilo on its own. Choose your miracle ( or fairy tale) – Noah’s Ark and other biblical stories or something from nothing with no purpose or cause.

To be sure, physicists have theories based on quantum fluctuations that allow for uncaused “something from nothing.” Astrophysicist Alex Filippenko says that “the Big Bang could have occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there.” But who created the laws of physics? Then there’s “fine tuning.” Physicists have identified about a dozen physical “constants” which if even a scintilla different in value would preclude the existence of liquid water, complex organic molecules and life itself, exquisite evidence for Design, the common-sense case for which was made in 1802 by philosopher William Paley, who wrote that if you find a pocket watch on the ground, the most reasonable assumption is that it was made by a watchmaker, not by natural forces. Believing otherwise, to use a modern analogy, would mean accepting that a tornado blowing through a junkyard could assemble a Boeing 747.

Which brings us to ignorant, Bible-beating hillbillies who live in Possum Hollow, Appalachia and marry their cousins – the caricature held by many, especially on the left, of believing Christians. Allow me to say, I’m not a “literal believer.” I believe in God and that Jesus was the greatest figure in history. I also believe it’s not inappropriate to judge people by their stance on the “big questions,” especially the biggest of all – does God exist? And of that it needs to be said, that between those with Ivy League Ph.D.’s in physics and philosophy who study the universe and existence for a living and who can regurgitate the equations of Big Bang cosmology and the nuances of abstract thought from René Descartes to Jean-Paul Sartre, but who reject the notion of God – and, on the other hand, regular folks of simple faith who believe the Earth is 10,000 years old and that every biblical miracle is truth – between Harvard Square and Possum Hollow, if you will – it’s the Possum Hollow folks who are closer to the ultimate truth of the matter on this greatest of all questions.