1. The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston

Comment #34706 by Antialias on April 25, 2007 at 1:10 am

I went to a lecture by Winston at Imperial College some months ago, where he outlined his views on the whole thing with much less anger. I suspect in the intervening time the success of the New Atheism movement has spurned him to more passionate (Dawkinsean?) polemic on the subject.

Anyway, his views according to the lecture he gave are a bit odd really- he seemed to subscribe to the old postmodernist/universalist attitude that there are many routes to the truth, science being only one, and that you're probably allright if you beleive in anything strongly.

In other words, wooly ivory-tower moderate. I asked him if this point of view lent credence to the idea of intelligent design (after all, evolution is only a sub-theory of one kind of truth) and he was unable to give much of a satisfactory answer. It's a shame, really, that he has to pick fights with us rather than the infinitely more threatening Religious Righters invading this country (Peter Vardy springs to mind) but then again when you live and work in Kensington maybe a unified movement for atheism by academics from the Left (and, finally, the Right) seems more threatening to moderate practice.

Whatever his religious views I have immense respect for the man- I just wish he were on our side,