Madam, - Paul Grealish (September 8th) misunderstands and misrepresents my argument that faith and science are compatible (Rite and Reason, August 28th) coming to the dogmatic conclusion that such a view is "wholly falsifiable".
I did not say Richard Dawkins's belief in natural selection was a "faith". I did say that "scientism" - the idea that science can explain everything - is.
On the authenticity of the gospels, I did not suggest that the work of critical scholars such as Dominic Crossan can be ignored. I did say no serious discussion could ignore Bishop N.T. Wright's work in this area. In fact Wright engages in lengthy critiques of the theories of highly sceptical scholars such as Crossan, and I would urge Mr Grealish to read him.
Mr Grealish also contests my "contentious" comment that science itself grew out of a Christian framework of thought. Johannes Kepler? Robert Boyle? Issac Newton? Francis Bacon? Galileo himself?
It was these men's Judaeo-Christian worldview that helped give shape to modern science. For, in contrast to Greek philosophy's impersonal deification of nature, if a rational God created the universe, this universe would make sense and could even be understood (hence laws of science).
The job of the scientist was, as Kepler put it, "to think God's thoughts after him".
Finally, to attempt to dismiss contemporary religious scientists as "rare and anachronistic" is to propagate a needless conflict thesis between faith and science. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, says that God "can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory".
The late Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist and atheist, could conclude that "either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs - and equally compatible with atheism".
In other words, science proves nothing either way, so let's stop trying to use it as a prop for other agendas. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK MITCHEL, Irish Bible Institute, Foley Street, Dublin 1.