Sir, - Dr William Reville credits the monotheistic Judaeo-Christian religions with potentiating the emergence of science (Science Today, October 20th). He argues that it was they who initially postulated "a universe created on consistently rational principles". Oh Pythagoras! Oh Euclid! Oh Eratosthenes, Heraclitus, Aneximines, Socrates, Plato! Science, set on its path by the preSocratics, was inhibited for a thousand years by religion.
We must now deal with the fact that DNA has evolved a tool (us) of a sufficient complexity to modify itself by a method other than evolution. This represents a leap beside which bipedalism, tool use, the wheel, fire, metal-working, agriculture, writing, even the microchip, were mere tinkering.
Perhaps the time has come to face the fact that evolution is passing beyond religion. Religion was, like the appendix, crucial at a certain stage; it explained the apparently inexplicable and modified human behaviour, thus enabling us to deal with evolving social and economic situations; but now, again like the appendix, it merely has an all too manifest propensity to cause pain and suffering. - Yours, etc.,
From Nicholas Kindersley
Derryglogher Lodge, Kenagh, Co Longford.