Sir, – Mairin de Burca’s tale of her attempts to quit the Catholic Church (June 12th) contained so many curious assertions that I found myself squinting in disbelief.
Two claims stood out. First, Ms de Burca considers it a “serious breach of a citizen’s civil rights” that recorded defection is no longer available to her and others.
While I am aware that a European court has recently carved a “right to be forgotten” out of thin air in the Google case, I am aware of no analogous right in ecclesiastical contexts. Indeed, a similar regime would be very peculiar given that this matter involves canonical, not civil, rights.
Second, I find it a bit strange to, on the one hand, declare that the Catholic faith is meaningless for one personally, and yet on the other hand, insist that a parochial registry of the Catholic Church – recording one's (meaningless) baptism – be amended. Ms de Burca's real objective must be to undo whatever "hold" the Catholic Church is perceived to exercise over its former members by refusing to alter the historical fact of baptism. Ms de Burca claims that her "baptism was rescinded". As a church historian I would be most interested to see a document stating that fact, given that in both the Code of Canon Law (canon 849) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 1272), baptism is referred to as "indelible".
It seems to me that, given the entirely voluntary nature of religious participation, the plainest way to “cease to observe the Catholic church’s rituals” is to do exactly that. – Yours, etc,
Dr SEAN
ALEXANDER SMITH,
Chao de Loureiro,
Lisbon.
Sir, – It might be helpful if atheist contributors to your letters page (June 12th) desisted from claims such as faith and logic being mismatched. In fact, if pure logic is demanded, then the proper position is agnosticism, not atheism. When this is pointed out, the atheist customarily moves his position to the “burden of proof” argument, apparently unaware that the legal burden of proof is a utilitarian doctrine rather than a scientific or academic one; it is accepted in law for practical reasons, but outside of a courtroom, there is no assumption of “innocence” or “guilt” as such, and the burden of proof rests on whomever is making whatever assertion.
For the atheist, this is problematical, since the concept of a creator God is a perfectly reasonable one, particularly when placed against the alternative of life from random chance, a likelihood (as calculated by scientist and atheist Sir Roger Penrose) as being one in 10 to the 10th power to the 123rd power, a number so vast that, were you to write it out as a single “one” with all the zeros behind it, it would stretch beyond the limits of the universe.
With such odds, there is no particular reason to assume atheism as the default.
The problem is that atheism – at least in its newer, Dawkinsian variety – is an affectation. Most atheists are motivated less by an attachment to logic and more by a desire to perceive of themselves as being just a little more intelligent, just a little less gullible than their fellows.
In one regard, they are the living proof of the doctrine that what you think of God comes out in what you think of others. More thoughtful atheists, like the philosopher Thomas Nagel, have noted this phenomenon, commenting that “atheism, like religion, can often rest more on a will to believe than on dispassionate rational arguments”.
He is, of course, quite correct. – Yours, etc,
DAVID SMITH,
Harmonstown Road,
Artane, Dublin 5.