Sir, - I note with some amusement the uncomfortable quandaries in which Drs William Reville ("Science Now", October 20th) and Ian Hughes ("Rite and Reason", October 28th) find themselves when discussing the supernatural. As people of science, accustomed to working with observation, experimentation and fact, they become coy and nervous when talking about deities and superstition.
Dr. Hughes's essay amounts to little more than a limp argument in favour of some sort of woolly thinking. He uses few facts and gets them wrong. Isaac Newton was not a man "determined to rid religion of irrational mysticism" (as though this were possible) - he was something of an irrational mystic, and aspiring alchemist, himself. Pascal was not "one of the first thinkers" to question the existence of a deity - people have been doing so for millenia. Dr Hughes mentions evolution by rejecting Dawkins, the world's finest authority on evolutionary theory, and turning instead to a pair of theologians. This is not science. It is a futile and unscientific exercise in denial. - Yours, etc.,
Eustace Street, Dublin 2.