Madeleine Bunting picks up on what I think is the most serious problem of Richard Dawkins’ brand of secular humanism. (via Mr. Grouchypants) It simpy “hasn’t generated a compelling popular narrative and ethic of what it is to be human and our place in the cosmos.” The misguided alliance of atheism and science further obfuscates the key issues. Science will never tell us why we are here and what our role is in relationship to the world that we perceive around us.

To be fair, many claims made by religious institutions may be and have been debunked by scientific discovery. But religion per se, humanity’s search for God and its subsequent relationship with Him, remains completely unscathed. When pushed against the wall, the secular humanist merely plays the skeptic’s card, seeming not to realize that it cuts both ways.

I’m still waiting for a positive atheistic-humanistic worldview that can hold its own with the great religious traditions of the ages, in both scope and depth, while maintaining the strict logical rigor that critics demand of theologians.