Getting scientific

Jamie Whyte, in a recent Opinion article in The Times (September 16), wrote: ‘Many atheists behold the persistence of religion in the West with something close to incredulity. How can it be, they lament, that, despite the absence of any evidence for the central tenets of Christianity, despite the enormous progress of science in explaining the origins of the earth and its inhabitants, so many people continue to believe pre-Enlightenment gobbledegook?’ He added: ‘The persistence of religious profession is irritating. It is a sign of something intellectually unserious in the professor’.

David Back