Faith, hope and opinion

Sir, – David Smith (June 13th) might be surprised to learn that most atheists are not overly concerned with the belief (or non-belief) of others in deities. Their primary concern is the belief that the same deity cares, among other things, about who you sleep with, how you get married, what you learn in school, and whether your non-viable pregnancy should be terminated. The devolution of authority from the people to the church, often with disastrous consequences, is what really beggars belief.

Separate the church from the so-called republic, and you can believe in whatever you like. – Yours, etc,

EOIN O’LOUGHLIN,

Newtown Park,

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Naas Road,

Blessington,

Co Wicklow.

Sir, – David Smith writes “the concept of a creator God is a perfectly reasonable one, particularly when placed against the alternative of life from random chance, a likelihood (as calculated by scientist and atheist Sir Roger Penrose) as being one in 10 to the 10th power to the 123rd power”.

However, when Penrose presents this number, it is not as a probability value. For that to be so, all outcomes must be possible and there must be something special about this one – this is not the case. The universe could have come out many, many ways – it just happens that it came out this way. The odds against a specific configuration of a deck of cards is about 10 to the power 59 – yet I do not see regular letters to yourself complaining about the utter improbability of the bridge puzzle.Unfortunately, a perfect monotheistic god does not have that privilege – there is only one possibility, in an infinite number of lesser possibilities.

Using that same statistical reasoning, such a being is not improbable but practically impossible. – Yours, etc,

DAVID McNERNEY,

Beechurst,

Killarney Road,

Bray.

Sir, – Ian Courtenay (June 12th) is correct in distinguishing between faith and logic. However, the difference between them does not amount to incompatibility – they are both ways of perceiving and understanding, and they can co-exist and be mutually supportive. By way of analogy, we might note that people come to knowledge of their surroundings by various means – sight, hearing, taste, touch, reflection. These co-existent faculties, though different from each other, can co-operate to the same ends within a single individual.

Faith does not entail the abandonment of logic, but it may be accompanied by an acceptance that human reasoning is not omnipotent in the search for understanding. – Yours, etc,

CHARLIE TALBOT,

Moanbane Park,

Kilcullen, Co Kildare.