Saturday’s Guardian offered an interesting article from Thomas Jackson on Richard Dawkin’s take on St. Thomas, and Thomas’s take on Aristotle. Jackson concludes:
In the end, why do I think that Aquinas is right and Dawkins is wrong? Partly because the world is so beautiful. Natural selection explains the origin of species most satisfyingly. But it doesn’t explain why they are so beautiful. And what about those uncountable millions thoughout the ages who have claimed an intensely meaningful personal relationship with the ground of existence? This experience has been corroborated so many times, you would have thought that people who swear by peer review would have paid heed. If, as seems to be the case, it is impossible to talk about mother nature except in terms of a personal creative force, then perhaps, if language is to mean anything at all, the difference between Dawkins and Aquinas is not really very great.
