In the latest former-former-theist news, British biographer and poet A.N. Wilson has renounced atheism. His own account occurs here in the New Statesman.
The story is a few months old but, as most readers know and many have commented, I've been incognito this semester.
I find this very interesting for a number of reasons including. 1. It's a token of the type intellectual revert. 2. It's a token of the type British intellectual revert. 3. I read his biographies of Jesus and of C.S. Lewis and found them a bit bifurcated. There seemed to be a half-believing Wilson and a half-belligerent Wilson. 4. I once would have disassociated myself from the sort of case he makes, but now endorse it, and have been experimenting with formalizing it.
The comment on Bach and Beethoven strikes me as deep and fascinating: "Reading Louis Fischer’s Life of Mahatma Gandhi, and following it up with Gandhi’s own autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, I found it impossible not to realise that all life, all being, derives from God, as Gandhi gave his life to demonstrate. Of course, there are arguments that might make you doubt the love of God. But a life like Gandhi’s, which was focused on God so deeply, reminded me of all the human qualities that have to be denied if you embrace the bleak, muddled creed of a materialist atheist. It is a bit like trying to assert that music is an aberration, and that although Bach and Beethoven are very impressive, one is better off without a musical sense."