THE IDEA FOR Devout Sceptics came to me some years ago when reading Sir Leslie Stephen’s An Agnostic’s Apology. The phrase is his — an oxymoron as potent as “bittersweet”. Irritated by organised religion, he nevertheless acknowledged the sense of the numinous within the human spirit and the longing for faith that may result: “We wish for spiritual food and are to be put off with these ancient mummeries of forgotten dogma.”

Throughout history men and women have been aware of the Other: a dimension of spirit that transcends the mundane. But they may not name it God. While I may still envy those whose faith is strong, there are (sadly) many proofs that external religious observance need have no effect on moral behaviour, while the atheist can be morally upright with no faith other than a sense of duty towards humankind. In a sense this book adds up to a celebration of doubt as a positive force.

Most (if not all) of those who agreed to be guests on five series of Radio 4’s Devout Sceptics would have applauded George Eliot’s combination of reason with reverence, when reverence means (to oversimplify) trying to do good. Devout sceptics are seekers who won’t trust the maps they have been given, but know there is a destination towards which to stumble, even if it proves to be the place they began at and (to invoke T. S. Eliot) they know it for the first time.

What is religious feeling, or (to be less specific) a sense of the numinous? To those raised in the Judaeo-Christian tradition it will presuppose a revelation from one God, maintained by the sacred community of the Church. But many faiths have worshipped more than one god, while some have worshipped none at all. A growing interest in Buddhism, for example, is notable among my contemporaries as well as the younger generation.

In the arts, popular culture and interior design, the crossing of conventional boundaries between East and West has enriched people’s lives in ways that defy analysis. One might mock that ubiquitous decorating trope, the head of Buddha, but who is to know what power emanates from such images? Who is to say that the ritual burning of joss sticks, lighting of candles and scattering of crystals in the home, far from being New Age nonsense, may not have an effect of calming and uplifting the soul equal to that of the “smells and bells” in the Catholic Church?

Cynics despise this pick ’n’ mix attitude to religion as an insurance policy — a mixture of New-Age fluffiness with the hope for a visitation from a divine Man from the Pru. But who cares? The Vatican may caution against it (“The challenge of New Age religiosity cannot be underestimated”), but I felt greatly liberated the day I realised there was nothing wrong with being comfortable in the hippy-chic coat of many colours.

The point is, we cannot know. The spirit of the modern has been to question everything, but that is not necessarily at odds with a sense of the religious. I have already pointed out how agnosticism may be fuelled by the profoundest moral sense. Similarly, four elements of secular life today (our conversations showed again and again) can lead to glimmerings of the divine: scientific knowledge, awareness of the environment, the wide availability of the arts and the psychological study of human nature.

The picture of the universe brought to us by modern scientific knowledge is one that renders the traditional religious attribute of awe entirely appropriate. Pascal’s medieval vision of the sky — its silence and immensity truly terrifying — might well be shared by the modern astronomer, whose instruments, more powerful than ever, lead him to the outer reaches of Kant’s “starred heaven” to find . . . infinity.

A sense of the sacred may be found in a field; it may be inspired by contemplation of the great rose window at Chartres. Agnostics like myself tiptoe towards the deity while listening to music. Why the search? Why make such an effort, when most of us cannot answer Gauguin’s final questions: “Who are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going?” But for all those who agree to be classed as a devout sceptic the perpetual questioning is all. What they have in common is the desire to wrestle with issues of free will and the existence of evil which help to define our humanity, as well as a conviction that there is more to our existence than “getting and spending”.

I no longer expect the dramatic conversion, the mystical fusion with the Holy Spirit; no tongues of flame or howling winds, no voice in the darkness or rending of the curtain. I still believe that the search for God is the quest for goodness, and that it can lead us through the valley of the shadow, not to an other-worldly Paradise but to an understanding of what it means to be human, and a desire to be better. I am not the first to look with enchantment at my own life and gasp because it is all passing, changing, dying before my eyes. It is not the dread that this life is all, but that this love is all: the knowledge that one must look at this family calmly in the knowledge that “one goodbye must be the last”. Will that be it? I think the answer is a blunt “Yes”. I doubt that the dead go on before us and we shall see them face to face, but . . . but . . . upon the mere hint of a possibility many a soul has gone to the communion rail, many a weeping family found consolation in the shadow of the churchyard yew.

Still a devout sceptic, still on a quest, still believing in that goodness, I know these questions will go on being asked, the conversations will continue, like the lighting of candles. The sense of the numinous links more people than one might think in this secular, sex-obsessed and silly age — and it will go on taking me into churches, to meditate on the power of old stones, old faith, even when the organ is silent.

Devout Sceptics: Conversations on Faith and Doubt, Hodder & Stoughton, £10.99. Available from the Times Bookshop at £8.79 plus 99p p&p. Call 0870 160 80 80

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