From the New Statesman
Do people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins simply not get life?
I think on the whole that's right, that clever as the professional atheists are, they are missing out on some very basic experiences of life.
What's the worst thing about being faithless?
The worst thing about being faithless? When I thought I was an atheist I would listen to the music of Bach and realize that his perception of life was deeper, wiser, more rounded than my own. Ditto when I read the lives of great men and women who were religious.
Reading Northrop Frye and Blake made me realize that their world-view (above all their ability to see the world in mythological terms) is so much more INTERESTING than some of the alternative ways of looking at life.
Can you love god and agree with Darwin?
I think you can love God and agree with the author of The Voyage of the Beagle, the Earth Worm, and most of the Origin of Species.
The Descent of Man, with its talk of savages, its belief that black people are more primitive than white people, and much nonsense besides, is an offence to the intelligence - and is obviously incompatible with Christianity.
I think the jury is out about whether the theory of Natural selection, as defined by neo-Darwinians is true, and whether serious scientific doubts, as expressed in a new book Why Us by James Lefanu, deserve to be taken seriously. For example, does the discovery of the complex structure of DNA and the growth in knowledge in genetics require a rethink of Darwinian "gradualism". But these are scientific rather than religious questions.
ht Jason Clark http://deepchurch.org.uk/
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