Letter: Miners' faith

Presumably, then, He allowed the trapped Chinese miners to die during the Chilean rescue as punishment for Communist godlessness.

However, some of the Chinese miners were only injured, leading me to wonder on what basis God selected them for survival while dispensing with the others; I assume He detected some worthiness in them.

Conversely, it now appears that some of the pious South Americans had been lustily rejecting His commandment on adultery, in which case I would have expected Him to single them out for a few broken bones at least, as a warning to mend their ways.

Robert Dow

Ormiston Road

Tranent

Andrew Morton (Letters, 19 October) attributes the rescue efforts on behalf of the trapped Chilean miners to "their genes" honed to "compassion" by "millions of years of evolution".

I assume that people who fail to engage in altruistic behaviour are also driven by their "genes", but by the "selfish" ones, also honed by millions of years of evolution.

If compassion and callous indifference are then equally arbitrary evolutionary survival strategies, our attempt to value one over the other could also be seen as a mere biological phenomenon.

Personal moral responsibility then becomes illusory, and ethics collapse into relativism as opposing sides claim that they are faithfully representing their genetic disposition, but no one has a stand point from which to judge between them.

Returning to the Chilean minors, I'm happy to let them speak for them selves, for example: "I have never prayed before. I learnt to pray down there. I came close to God", "We were singing to the Lord, we were doing what pleases the Lord.

"So everyone accepted Him, many of them reconciled themselves with the Lord, some of them made promises to Him".

They did not ask for books about genetics and evolution, but 33 Bibles were sent down to them in response to their requests.

Richard Lucas

Cowan Road

Edinburgh