By James Kelly, National Catholic Register

According to the commonly held view about her great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Darwin, Laura Keynes has apparently broken all the rules in developing a passionate Catholic faith.

Apart from her family lineage, which includes her great-great-uncle, economist John Maynard Keynes, Laura also holds a doctorate from Oxford University in philosophy.

But in mid-June, the Catholic Herald reported the startling news that this highly educated Darwinian descendant had evolved into a Catholic apologist, joining Britain’s Catholic Voices.

When asked how she found her way to the Catholic Church, Keynes reveals that she was actually baptised Catholic after her mother converted shortly after her birth. However, by the time she was 12, her mother had lapsed, and her faith formation ended.

“From my father’s side of the family, the Darwin-Keynes side, I was getting a different influence: highly rational, scientific, secular, humanist,” she says. “My father is an academic neuroscientist, and I absorbed the view that all phenomena are the product of the material brain. I gradually drifted into agnosticism.”

The reason for her return to the faith of her baptism is quite surprising and something of an “own goal” for Britain’s shrill “new atheists.” She explains that, in her 20s, while she was working on her doctorate at Oxford, the “God Debate” took off, after a flurry of publication from the likes of Richard Dawkins...

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