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Some new atheists and their love for the infinite and eternal

I am thinking here of of Dawkins's God Delusion, which in the last few pages waxes poetic about the possibility that there is an unlimited intelligibility and beauty in nature (my memory is imprecise, so I admit there may be a bit of isogesis going on here...but the basis point stands).  And Steven Pinker, who at the end of his Language Instinct, talks about "endless forms, most beautiful."  That is, the limitlessness of the possible expressions, which is explained in his opinion by the combinatorial nature of words (for the record, I propose that while the combinatorial nature of expressions may partially explain the limitlessness of their possibilities, there is something about us that makes the combinatorial possible but which Pinker doesn't recognize because of his materialism).  And Sean Carroll, whose book on evolution has a title that sounds quite like the words I just quoted from Pinker.  This title, as well as the book, may appeal to the same attraction to the infinite, but I can't say for sure, 'cause I haven't read it yet.

My point is that the delight these fellows have in science has more than a trace of a desire for more than they have experienced, for something that is more than a puzzle to be solved and forgotten; a desire, rather, for something that has an unending beauty--a desire for God.

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