Mark Vernon

Mark Vernon is a British writer, psychotherapist, and former Anglican priest whose work negotiates the borderlands between Christianity, agnosticism, and contemporary science. Trained in physics before studying theology and earning a PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick, he was ordained in the Church of England but later left ordained ministry, eventually describing himself as an agnostic with sympathies for Platonic and contemplative Christianity. His books, aimed at a general readership, draw on ancient philosophy, depth psychology (especially Jung and Owen Barfield), and the Christian mystical tradition to argue that uncertainty and openness, rather than confident theism or militant atheism, best characterize honest religious thought. In How to Be an Agnostic (2011) he defends agnosticism as a positive intellectual virtue, distinct from indifference or weak atheism, and critiques the New Atheist polemics of Dawkins and Hitchens as well as triumphalist apologetics. Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life (2007) surveys the limits of scientific explanation regarding ultimate questions. Subsequent works engage Owen Barfield, the evolution of consciousness, and the rediscovery of Christian Platonism. Vernon broadcasts and writes regularly for outlets including the Guardian and Church Times, and collaborates with Iain McGilchrist and Rupert Sheldrake. Critics from analytic philosophy of religion contend that his appeal to mystery and participation evades sharper questions about reference and truth-conditions for theistic claims, while secular reviewers question the substantive content of his agnostic affirmations.