Sir, - Michael McMullin (November 17th) writes of "the ultimate catastrophe towards which modern civilisation is heading", as though pushed along by "the Antichrist, in the form of Richard Dawkins". What a gripe!
I am convinced that, when the first piece of writing ever scratched by mortal hand is finally discovered and deciphered, it will be found to read: "The world is doomed, mankind has lost all moral sense, disintegration and intellectual atrophy abound, catastrophe looms."
I was (also?) at Richard Dawkins's talk, and the message I took away was more like: "There is now a niche for a great poet of scientific enlightenment; I am not that poet, though I am compelled by the wonder of it all to do the best I can, but lo! one cometh after me."
What I found less digestible about the professor's entertainment was his eager assertion that science, in contrast with, for instance, theology and new-age pseudo-science, deals with something called "the real world". Let's be sane about this: there is no such thing available to objective discourse, and those who make it such an article of faith are hunting for snarks. - Yours, etc., Andrew Robinson,
Marlborough Road,
Dublin 4.