I READ with interest that Richard Dawkins is to campaign against religion in schools and charities (Godless Dawkins challenges schools, News, last week). Surely, though, there is a flaw in his own reasoning? By devoting money and energy to the cause, Dawkins is making a strong, even fervent ethical statement. Why does he believe so strongly that objective reason matters? Even if one can derive a basis for moral behaviour from evolution, there is no objective motive for a human being to choose it.

To espouse the cause of objective reason is not a decision arising from reason — it is a choice made on the basis of faith, in particular a faith in the power of reason to explain all that needs explaining in human life. It would be more honest and make a more compelling argument for reason if Dawkins were to say so.

Penny Gadd
Cambridge

TRUE LIES: As an agnostic and lecturer in biology, I have no problems with Dawkins correcting misconceptions about evolution. I hope, for example, that he will correct a number of Darwinist falsehoods; the biggest being that Charles Darwin originated the theory of natural selection, ignoring his brave admission that he was not the first to suggest it.

Perhaps Darwinists are lax with their scholarship or merely aim to keep people in the dark while they try and stop those nasty creationists peddling lies?

Dr Milton Wainwright
Department of Molecular
Biology and Biotechnology
University of Sheffield

BATTLING IT OUT: It is not religions that cause wars, but people. Quite how we are going to solve all our problems by making everybody godless is not clear. I bow to Dawkins’s knowledge as a scientist, but on matters of religion he is way out of his depth.

Geoff Pearce-Gan
Guildford, Surrey

CONVERTED? Dawkins is right in that the dogmas of organised religions, particularly the “Abrahamic” faiths, continue to lead to so much division. His own polemic, however, appears to be taking on a religious zeal; one wonders if a road-to-Damascus experience is in the wings.

Roger Payne
London NW3

RI: Religion in schools is obviously a bad idea, except when it’s the individual’s religion in question. We need more people like Dawkins to stand up for reason and sanity.

Josh Timonen
Sherman Oaks, California, USA

SCIENTIFIC DESIGN: It is unreasonable to suggest that consciousness, human will and responsibility are simply products of materialistic science. Dawkins’s thesis undermines the very platform he so boldly states — reason, since materialistic determinism undermines all basis for rationality itself as C S Lewis and many other brilliant minds have shown.

For too long our state schools have been dominated by a false view of science — that it can only be done within a materialistic framework. A design thesis is valid and a reasonable scientific alternative.

Professor Andy McIntosh
Energy and Resources Research
Institute, University of Leeds