Science and religion

Sir, – David McConnell (October 13th) should be commended not just for bringing a number of the major issues into clearer focus, but for his tolerance towards Christians. It is indeed refreshing to see such a prominent member of the Humanist Association allow that Christianity is itself a humanism; all the more so given the tendency of some humanists to assume that the very word “humanism” is commensurate with “atheism”.

Nonetheless, it is understandable that Patrick Davey (October 20th) should find in Prof McConnell’s attitude that “limitation of allowable evidence” that some would apply not only to science but to the empirical philosophical tradition as a whole.

A famous comic stage routine, now of venerable age, which emerged, I believe, in the closing years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, has achieved a certain longevity because it has been interpreted as a satire on positivism (or science in its most assertive form). On the stage is revealed a man walking around in circles under a street-lamp, apparently searching for something he has lost, with the benefit of the limited illumination the lamp affords. He is joined by a second man, who asks: “Have you lost something?” To which the first man replies: “Yes, a valuable coin”. So the second man joins the first in his circular quest. Nothing is found. The second man then asks the first: “Are you sure you lost it here?” To which the first man replies, pointing to the surrounding darkness; “No, I lost it over there – but there’s no light over there . . .” 

Rather than spell out the allegory, it seems more appropriate, given the context, to let this stand as a parable. Readers are well able, one assumes, to join the necessary dots. One might further add the pithy admonition given by Blaise Pascal: that there are not one, but “two extremes” – not only “to exclude reason”, but “to admit reason only”.

The interpretation of our existential situation requires the application of the full range of our faculties; and there are those, not only Christians, who feel that a strict reliance on reason and empiricism will not disclose all we feel the need to know. – Yours, etc,

BRIAN COSGROVE, 

Dublin 18.

Sir, – I find it ironic that most of my godfaring friends believe in only the god or gods of one religion and not in the gods of all religions. There is much documentation on the number of deities that have been documented since the beginning of recorded history. (I am basing this on the invention of writing by the Sumerians 6,000 years ago but other measures are possible.) Records put this number somewhere between 2,870 and over 12 million. The current Hindu religion records more that 300 gods at present.

Using the lower number here, then most of the Irish monotheistic religious would agree with atheists on at least 2,869 of the documented gods and all 300-plus of the Hindu gods. The only difference between the sides is the tiny increment of extending that agreement to one further god. – Yours, etc,

ANDREW DOYLE,

Bandon,

Co Cork.