Reason is ultimately useless?
Funny, from my reading of the Gospels, I found the legendary Jesus to be a pretty reasonable fella.
"Do unto others, as you would have then do unto you"; very reasonable way for people to get along.
"turn the other cheek", forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive..."; how else can you stop the escalating "violence begets violence"?
Shame we can't live up to it.
One thing is certain: if there is a God,the first people to meet and understand IT will be scientists. Those who have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, and become as Gods themselves.
Or dead people.
I'm going with scientists.

" .. the theory of natural selection, like all theories, is made whole by applying personal judgment."

The theory of Natural Selection has been made whole by consensus, including consensus about verifying facts, such as DNA and the way it works, first elucidated by Gregor Mendel.

Reason has given us:

Planes, cars, trains, computers, the Internet, printing, vaccination, safe childbirth, double life expectancies, winter strawberries, camembert cheese, Richard Dawkins and an end to smallpox.

Religion has given us:

The Spanish Inquisition and Cardinal Pell.

Not really such a hard decision, is it?

But what a shame that OO goes on giving its precious column inches to people who can't even begin to construct a logical argument, simply because they claim to represent some particular brand of mystic woo. When is the Mighty God Frazz going to have his day in the sun?

Jon J sums the situation precisely.

It is nearly 20 years since Terry Lane wrote "God; The Interview" which was updated in 2004. In the book Lane, with great humour, demolished miracles and the notion of a God interested in human affairs.

Epicurus, 300 years before the current era, summed the situation even more precisely;
"If god is willing to prevent evil but unable
Then he is not omnipotent
If he is able but not willing he is malevolent
If he is both able and willing
Whence cometh evil
If neither able nor willing
Why call him god"

The author goes too far when he claims that reason is ultimately useless.

But, whatever reason might or might not be, it certainly isn't always objective, and it's application definitely isn't always clear. So I agree with the author that the new atheists need to understand that much.

This is all a little... desperate, isn't it Mr Christensen?

>>Doubtless, numerous unengaged monologues, animated by bitterness and fear more than dispassionate reason, were delivered, yet still no news reports of a final answer for humanity.<<

I don't recall seeing anywhere in the pre-publicity for the Convention, that they intended to determine - or even get a step closer to - the meaning of life, the universe and everything. A topic that holds absolutely no interest for an atheist.

There is no doubt that we humans are, in galactic terms, merely a chemical anomaly, and will exist and disappear in the cosmic equivalent of a blink of an eye. What, apart from your gut feeling that "there has to be something more than this", suggests anything different?

You picked your Hitchhiker quote a little out of context, too. Here is the immediately preceding exchange:

ARTHUR: All through my life I’ve had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world… and no one would tell me what it was.

SLARTIBARTFAST: No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe has that

It is also perfectly normal curiosity to ask yourself "why are we here, what is the purpose of our existence. And it is a measure of the arrogance of some folk to actually imagine that there is one. That we are, somehow, rooly rooly important in the context of the universe as a whole. What staggers me sometimes is that even a cursory glance at the scale of the cosmos, its age, its dimensions and some of the things that are going on in it, will tell you that we are pretty insignificant.

As the Book tells us:

"'Space,' it says, 'is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space, listen…and so on"

The very idea of a "purpose", other than to lead a good and happy life, simply disintegrates under the sheer bigness of space.