Big ban theory

So that’s all Christians, Muslims and most people in Scotland? Does he really think that only those who believe that the universe self-created out of nothing should be allowed into schools?

Perhaps it is time for militant atheists to leave the traditional Scottish Christian education system and set up their own atheist schools? As a Christian I am quite happy to tolerate such irrational schools, unlike the new fundamentalist atheists who seem panicked every time anyone dares express disagreement. Are the atheists so unsure of their own case that they have to have a witch-hunt against those who don’t buy into their mocking and arrogant meta-narrative?

David Robertson

Solas CPC

St Peters Free Church

Dundee

Richard Lucas (Letters, 2 October) says “let debate flourish in schools” and condemns “secular totalitarianism”. There is no debate between creationism, the view the Bible is literally true, and evolution. Evolution is science with rational conclusions drawn from observed data, while creationism is demonstrably absurd.

Furthermore, teaching creationism as science is theocratic and describing the teaching of evolution as totalitarian is an inversion of reality: it is no more totalitarian than refusing to teach the views of the flat earth society.

Bruce Crichton

Victoria Road

Falkirk

Richard Lucas’s argument that scientists don’t know how life on Earth started is wrong. There are many theories on how life started. Abiogenesis, clay hypothesis, primitive extraterrestrial model, Gold’s deep biosphere model and autocatalysis. None of these require God, Zeus, Thor or any other mythical deity.

Also physicists can explain that the universe came about naturally as a result of an expansion of unimaginable size from pure energy which existed in an infinite regression where time as we know it couldn’t exist.

Mr Lucas then hijacks the argument for deism, namely that God created the universe and retreated as an argument for theism.

Mr Lucas calls for a debate yet his Christian viewpoint is not conducive to anything that contradicts it. If Christianity were true it would not need to indoctrinate children.

I can’t say for certain that God doesn’t exist. However, I can say that every scientific claim in the Bible is wrong.

Virgins don’t give birth, snakes and donkeys can’t talk, dead people don’t rise from the grave and there was no global flood. Creationism isn’t science so it should be kept out of science classes. Anyone who can’t do that should not be teaching science

Alan hinnrichs

Gillespie Terrace

Dundee