Skeptics in the Pub

Author Mark Vernon on How to be an Agnostic and Why it Matters

The broadside against religion launched by a new generation of evangelical atheists has generated much heat but little light. Locked in battle against their Christian opponents the argument goes nowhere fast, and in an age of extremism, nurtures the dangerous vice of intolerance. To put it another way, the contemporary lust for certainty is demeaning of any real spiritual or humanist quest. It loses sight of the key to wisdom - as Socrates, the great theologians and the best scientists knew it – namely, a deepening understanding of the limits of our knowledge. This talk, which it is hoped will prompt a fulsome discussion, will ask how to be an agnostic and why it matters.

Mark Vernon was an Anglican priest, left a conviction atheist, but now finds himself to be a committed and increasingly passionate agnostic. His book, After Atheism: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life, is part personal story, part philosophical search. Mark is a journalist as well as writer, an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck College, and also author of The Philosophy of Friendship and What Not To Say.

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