Letter: The eternal battle of science versus faith

Once more, science sallies forth to demonstrate that its rational and logical theories and proven facts seem to disprove and discredit millennia of faith and dogma.

Reading the predictable response from Rev John Christie (your report, 3 September), it seems as if he does not understand the scientific imperative behind the search for the Higgs Boson, which is the, as yet, still theoretical particle that gives all other particles their mass.

Once found, this will almost certainly be the last piece in the jigsaw that gives understanding of who and what we are. Rather, the Rev Christie contents himself with quoting from glib and superstitious concepts drawn from Genesis and Creationism.

The difference between the claims of Professor Stephen Hawking and the massed forces of religion is that while religion has had little or no effect on science (except for trying to eradicate the parts it found inconvenient during the Middle Ages), science, through a continual process of experimentation and proof has had a profound effect on religion and forced it to continually re-evaluate the validity of its dubious "truths".

In spite of this and the continually mounting evidence to the contrary, there still are some, admittedly small, groups within the body religious that insist that the Bible is the literal truth and the received word of God and, therefore, permits the acceptance of foolish beliefs such as that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

It appears, therefore, that in spite of the proven knowledge presented by science there will always be those who reject it by reason of faith in the teachings of a book written by a largely fearful and ignorant culture, who made it fit their preconceptions.

Indeed, as Mark Twain once said: "Faith is believing in something that you know is not true."

BRIAN ALLAN

Keith Steet

Kincardine-on-Forth

Stephen Hawking's pronouncement that his scientific endeavours have led him to believe that there is no God is the latest example of an increasingly common phenomena: scientists (both professional and armchair) failing to realise the limitations of their endeavours. But as long as media attention multiplies when a metaphysical speculation is added to a scientific report, it will be tempting for scientists to grab the limelight with their amateur philosophy.

The relatively recent discovery that the universe had a beginning at a finite point in the past is a confirmation of the Bible's teaching, that had always stood against belief in an eternal universe. Surely the spontaneous appearance of space, matter and time in the Big Bang points to a supernatural cause that must be outside and independent of these elements?

The view that finding more planets renders the intricate engineering found in each of the vast array of terrestrial living things somehow unexeptional is astonishing.Most adults in Britain can't swallow whole the evolutionary dogma that we are just the products of unintelligent processes, and this perfectly reasonable intuition is backed up by sound rational and mathematical argument.

Atheist responses to the recently discovered astounding fine-tuning of the universe and of physical constants are also shallow and unconvincing. We exist in a universe in which a vast list of parameters are balanced on a knife edge, each perfect value crucial to life. An intelligent creating agent is the only reasonable explanation.

Your report quoted well from the Psalms: "In spite of His wonders, they did not believe."

RICHARD LUCAS

Cowan Road

Shandon, Edinburgh

It was inevitable that Stephen Hawking's book would provoke outrage and denial by religious vested interests. However, they merely show their ignorance of modern scientific discoveries and compound this with misguided and muddled attempts to place the Biblical accounts in a scientific context.

Rev John Christie's "soup of nothingness" is an oxymoron; there can be no soup if there was nothing. Nor is this what Genesis claims. The Rev Iver Martin needs to explain why he thinks that human curiosity is proof that God exists.

I see no evidence anywhere of the existence of supernatural entities and I welcome Prof Hawking's attempt to explain the latest cosmological discoveries.

STEUART CAMPBELL

Dovecot Loan, Edinburgh