Madam, - The affirmation of God, as I understand it, rests on two insights. The first is that being is self-explanatory. The second is that material being, and more generally, contingent being, is ultimately not self-explanatory.
Of course, these insights have to be subjected to rigorous critiques. For not all our ideas are true. Further, even it being granted that the ideas are true, one still has to go on to prove that they contain implicitly the notion of God.
If being is self-explanatory and contingent being is not self-explanatory, God exists necessarily. If He exists and material being is not self-explanatory, He is immaterial.
To kill off for good the notion of God, all one has to do is prove that being cannot be self-explanatory or that contingent and material being, as a matter of fact, is.
If these theses cannot be proved, God is going to keep on being proposed as the ultimate self-explanatory explanation of reality, atheists' weeping, and gnashing of teeth, notwithstanding.
Personally, I am very comfortable with the idea of God. And I should be lost without it. - Yours, etc,
M PHILIP SCOTT, OCSO, Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey, Portglenone, Co Antrim.
Madam, - For many years I had the impression that Christians in general and Catholics in particular were capable of believing half a dozen impossible things before breakfast. But now, apparently (Seán Ó Conaill, August 31st), we have an atheist philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, asserting that "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy". Well, at least we now know why Iraq is proving difficult: but can it be right for atheists to compete with Christians in absurdities? - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL TATHAM, Harrold, Bedford, England.
Madam, - As an old man, credited inevitably with acquired wisdom, I have replied to young people's doubts as follows.
Read St Mark's Gospel, (the shortest of the four) critically, as one would read a book of evidence. Read it completely in one session; quietly and with an open mind.
The reader should thus form his or her judgment. I guarantee the effort will not be wasted. - Yours, etc,
JOHN GARAVAN, Pontoon Road, Castlebar, Co Mayo.