Letter: Religious myths

Michael Pye (Books, 28 August) was right to attack Tariq Ramadan's simplistic notion of religious convergence: all attempts to unify religious beliefs yield an impoverished set of platitudes unrecognisable to adherents of any of the religions subsumed in the pluralistic melting pot.

It's not so much different roads meeting at the top of the mountain, as roads diverging from the same fundamental questions and heading in radically different directions.

The Galileo affair was quoted in its usual mythical form of the Church opposing science, when it was secular scholars who put pressure on the Church to silence Galileo. Mr Pye also trotted out familiar secularist errors. His suggestion that religious belief lacks evidence is just plain wrong. Most religions can point to evidence for their beliefs: scientific, moral, personal, experiential and historical. In the case of Christianity, this evidence is convincing, so I am a Christian.

He is right that "anyone equipped with a great truth wants the world to live by it", but what is so sinister about that? Strong belief is not dangerous, wrong belief is. Mr Pye's personal "great truth" seems to be that we would be better off without religion. Meanwhile, the quote from the Catholic Church declaring that Nazism demanded a loyalty that conflicted with a Christian's primary commitment to God was cited as though it revealed a totalitarian Church. It actually showed how higher devotion can foster resistance to totalitarianism.

RICHARD LUCAS

Cowan Road

Shandon, Edinburgh