I’m increasingly interested by what we’ve called the New New Atheists — atheists and some agnostics, too, who regret the loss of faith in our culture rather than aggressively promoting it as the Old New Atheists did, and do. In a prominent instance of the phenomenon, Douglas Murray, for one, has called himself a “Christian atheist.”

Neil Thomas, literary historian and author of the new book Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design, is sort of a spin on a New New Atheist. In a fascinating conversation with host Jonathan Witt for ID the Future, he call himself a “christian with a small ‘c’,” meaning someone who cannot affirm the traditional beliefs associated with Christianity but who has come to be sympathetic to it and recognizes that in living out his life in accordance with “humanist principles” he has been fueled indirectly by “Christian capital.” 

At the end of a wide-ranging discussion of evolutionary theory’s “crypto-animism” and more, Thomas eloquently protests the Church of England’s 2008 apology to Charles Darwin. Theism, he argues, possesses a better truth claim than Darwinism, and has nothing to apologize for. Download the podcast or listen to it here.