Sir, – One fervently hopes that Peadar de Barra’s vain effort to resist the temptation to indulge in verbosity (March 21st), was made by jamming his tongue firmly in his cheek.
Otherwise, he makes another worthy founding member of the Pseuds’ Corner, which you are so lax in not providing for Messrs de Barra, Kehoe, Waters and their ilk. Only in such a sanctuary could they give full vent to their obfuscating rhetoric. Whatever about the poverty of secularist thought, it rarely lacks clarity. You do not need recourse to a philosophical dictionary to interpret the prose of Richard Dawkins or the late Christopher Hitchens. Verbosity seems to be a favourite refuge of the irrational. Of course anti-secularists will have no truck with rationality; indeed, they now seem to have superseded it with “irrational rationality”. Well, I suppose nonsense by any other name.
Perhaps adherents to the religious standpoint should reflect on the myriads of mysteries, exoteric and otherwise, that once defied rationalisation and are now perfectly understood by all. Science eventually resolves most , if not all, mysteries. There is nothing “ultimately insoluble” about existence either – it just is. Our natural universe provides enough awe, inspiration, beauty and challenge to satisfy any human being. No need to transcend it. – Yours, etc,
FRANK CONROY,
Leenane PO,
Maam, Co Galway.