Louts and swots
Sir: A respected Christian lady is impressed by my arguments on religion and challenges Paul Johnson (And another thing, 3 September) to refute them. His idea of a refutation is to call me a stinks swot, and make some loutish remarks about geneti- cists (which I am not) and test-tubes (which I haven't used since schooldays) and slide- rules (which nobody has used for at least 20 years). This is playing to the well-known British prejudice against scientists, a form of philistinism which may contribute to our
LETTERS
lagging behind rival industrial nations such as Germany and Japan, and even France. But as a refutation of anybody's argument it is about as effective as refuting General Relativity by calling Einstein a yid.
Incidentally, Mr Johnson's hackneyed quoting of Einstein's letter to Max Born is 180 degrees wide of the deterministic mark he wishes to hit. Einstein's '[God] does not play dice' was a defence of determinism against quantum indeterminacy. But, of course, the cultivated Englishman will not stoop to the effort of trying to understand what that means.
Richard Dawkins
New College, Oxford
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