Malcolm Jones interviews British philosopher John Gray:
"I'm not a believer, but I'm friendly to religion, partly because it goes with being human—it's an odd kind of humanism which is hostile to something which is so quintessentially human as religion." That said, "I'm very opposed to investing science with the needs and requirements of religion. I'm equally opposed to the tendency within religion, which exists in things like creationism and intelligent design, to turn religion into a kind of pseudo-science. If you go back to St. Augustine or before, to the Jewish scholars who talk about these issues, they never regard the Genesis story as a theory. Augustine says explicitly that it should not be interpreted explicitly, that it's a way of accessing truths which can't really be formulated by the human mind in any rational way. It's a way of accessing mysterious features which will remain mysterious. So it was always seen right up to the rise of modern science—as a myth, not a theory. What these creationists are doing is retreating, they're accepting the view of religion promoted by scientific enemies of religion, and saying, no, we have got science and it's better than your science. Complete error."
Beautifully, powerfully put. Fundamentalism is not an outcrop of faith; it's what happens when real faith disappears. It is a neurosis, a coping mechanism and a category error – a sign of how deep the intellectual rot in Christianity has gone.
Gray, by the way, helped me tackle Oakeshott in my graduate school days and is one of the most provocative and intelligent theorists out there. "Straw Dogs" is a must-read, especially for those parts where one finds oneself in strenous disagreement.
The Dish 