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Letters

Letters to the Editor

In Defence of Religion • Oaks and Acorns • Nietzsche Calls

In Defence of Religion

The following letters are all responses to Les Reid’s article Santa Lives: The Challenge for Philosophy (Issue 7), which called for religion to be discarded.

Dear Editor,

Les Reid uses his Santa Claus immortality test to discard the ‘spirit in charge of the universe’. But doesn’t he find the existence of matter improbable? By what probability should we expect that there should be anything rather than nothing?

He dismisses immortality because a person only exists in his body’s actions so the skill of the lyre player is found only in the notes he plays. But consider the skill of a composer just before he wrote your favourite masterpiece. Was not the skill potentially there before he had written a note and if so how did the potency reside with him prior to the composition?

Yours truly,
Roger Farnworth
Cornwall

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