Peter Hitchens: A Howling Wilderness

An interview with Peter Hitchens, author of The Rage Against God:

I lived in the dying years of the Soviet Union in Moscow, I travelled extensively in the regions run by communism. I saw it and I know how very, very hostile it was to religion, and why it was. And one of the things I want to communicate to people is how that hostility is now being reforged by new atheists who in many cases have no idea of the forces they're trying to summon out of the ground and very little idea of the dangers of what they're doing. If you drive God out of the world, then you create a howling wilderness ...

This country ceased to be truly Christian, in terms of people genuinely, consciously and in an educated way believing in the Christian faith, after the First World War. People still continue to behave as if they're Christians, and society continues to function as if it's a Christian society for some time after it's gone. We've been living in the past 40 or 50 years in the afterglow of Christianity but eventually, eventually the darkness falls on you.

A howling wilderness is possible if no effective atheist leadership is forthcoming, but it's not inevitable.

Quotes are at 5:35 and 8:00 of the interview.