It looks to me like the next phase of the public debate has just taken off.
People like Humphrys and Alibhai-Brown that have so far held themselves to be outside the religion/atheist debate. They have a much more balanced and nuanced view of the world than these warring extreme factions, as they see them. It is interesting to see where this will go. It seems, this disenfranchised group in the childhood of defining its own position in the world, feels itself set-upon by both the dogmatic religiously defined God and unfeeling scientific reductionism.

There is I think, affecting an awful lot of people of the same mindset, a growing dislike of cold-hearted, out of control science, globalisation, climate change, destruction of the planet, wars, religious or otherwise all lumped into one threatening bundle. A wish to return to better simpler times when we could just all get along…

We must accept that there are a huge number of people that have no interest in science or reason, are quite happy to live there lives not knowing (like most of us to one degree or another) and find happiness in this way. These authors do not really believe in God, but they see something not described by science or religion, that really happens to them.

These people are not to be loathed because they see the world in a different way. In fact all we lack is a common language to describe the world we see about us.

Do these authors really think that an atheist, does not, can not, see beauty in the reflection of a full moon over the sea? Do they imagine that we observe these physical events in terms of photons, atmospheric conditions and Newtonian physics? I really think they must.