Madam, - With regard to recent contributions on this issue, I offer the following quotation from an editorial by Bill Allen in National Geographicmagazine some time in the 1980s. A copy hangs above my desk to keep me on the straight and narrow:
"Faith and science have at least one thing in common: both are lifelong searches for the truth. But while faith is an unshakable belief in the unseen, science is the study of testable, observable phenomena.
"The two coexist, and may at times complement each other. But neither should be used to validate or invalidate the other. Scientists have no more business questioning the existence of God than theologians had telling Galileo the Earth was at the centre of the universe."
Like the two parallel rails on a railway line, science and faith remain separated at the point on the line at which one stands. And while they seem to converge as you look to the horizon, experience to date suggests that they should remain separate human activities.
- Yours, etc,
Dr OWEN DOYLE, School of Biology and Environmental Science, UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4.