Letter: It's a wonderful cosmos

From Stephen Wilson

As another atheist without qualms, it worries me that Lawrence Krauss so badly misses the point in his diatribe against religious belief (7 June, p 50). It does no good to caricature the “intellectually lazy creations of fundamentally ignorant minds”. Religious people don’t merely see the heavens as “more intimate and more magical”; they see them as more meaningful than we do.

It is lazy to underestimate the true horror science and especially Darwinism presents to the religious: that the universe can be sensibly understood to be without purpose. They take this to mean that life has no meaning.

We face today an urgent practical need to reposition ethics and a good deal of the law within an amoral universe. This inherently philosophical project is arcane, highly technical and inaccessible to most, including scientists. Krauss is not going to redress the yearning for meaning with his appeal to squillions of beautiful supernovae.

From Merle Arrowsmith

I am usually a great fan of Lawrence Krauss’s commentary – except when it comes to his pitiful attempts at denigrating religion. What you consider to be the representatives of faith worldwide are, statistically speaking, a loud but shrinking minority of (mainly American) fundamentalists who think they have to be afraid of science – as if science could ever threaten anyone’s faith! How is it that scientists who are usually so careful to make statistically significant claims in their own field never bother to do so when speaking about religion?

Christianity has to a great extent moved beyond the Middle Ages and incorporated modern thinking. I am a Christian and a scientist. I can think of plenty of brilliant Christian scientific minds – not to mention the medieval Muslim scientists without whom we would not, for example, even have zero.

Krauss’s argument that faith prevents religious people from tackling climate change is appallingly mean and unfounded. The proof of human-induced climate change is so very obvious that no Christian would dare deny it. On the contrary, we see preservation of nature as an urgent duty.

Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK

From Richard Kubiak

Lawrence Krauss’s brilliantly succinct, cogent and intelligent statement of the facts regarding the contrast between the breathtaking wonder of the universe we live in, and the limited, parochial and frankly self-obsessed view peddled by all the major religions (and political groups) was inspirational, if not radically new. I say this as someone baptised into the Catholic faith at the age of a few weeks – clearly at a time when my intellectual and spiritual development were at their height.

When the world and humanity are facing unprecedented problems of global warming, overpopulation, inadequate food provision, AIDS, and the burgeoning capabilities of science to improve our lot or do it terminal harm, we need clear, rational, moral and scientifically informed thought of the kind Krauss promotes. We do not need doctrinal imperatives imposed from “above” (whether human or divine).

Usk, Gwent, UK

Five Dock, New South Wales, Australia