The clash between God and science, in practice it often comes down to disagreements about man and morals. The boundaries are not always neat. Many Americans who are indifferent to faith will confess they find themselves challenged as they try to raise good and decent children without the religious confidence their parents had. The result may not be a return to religion but a healthy agnosticism about agnosticism itself.
I once had the opportunity to interview one of my heroes, Sidney Hook. This was a man whose commitment to his atheism and secular humanism was beyond question. One example: A doctor saved Mr. Hook's life by going ahead with an operation against Mr. Hook's wishes. Mr. Hook recovered—and promptly published an op-ed taking his doc to task.
It is possible, of course, to imagine a good society in the absence of a belief that man's dignity comes from his being fashioned in God's image. Something of the sort would have been Mr. Hook's ideal. Yet in his writings, the Almighty in whom Mr. Hook did not believe makes an extraordinary, one might say miraculous, number of appearances. When I asked him why he was not more dismissive, Mr. Hook replied that he was never comfortable with the dogmatism of the village atheist.
Perhaps he thought it "a mild form of dementia."
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