False image

The Reverend Neil Glover (Friends of the Scotsman, 
16 May) concludes that as we have an idea in our heads about God, therefore God exists.

This is naïve. There is evidence of religious belief dating back tens of thousands of years, but none of it involves the Christian myths to which Rev Glover presumably subscribes. Is it not much more likely therefore that there are socio-evolutionary and cognitive explanations for gods common to all religions, old and new, which are rooted in human psychology? Obey authority. Kill competitors with assured zeal. Work hard in this life because there’s jam tomorrow etc. You can see why it would catch on.

To assume that there is a supernatural being behind that which we cannot explain is 
anthropocentric in the extreme. We make gods in our own image and not the other way around.

Neil Barber

Saughtonhall Drive

Edinburgh