A blasphemous belief
From Kevin Holland
Sir: I usually greatly enjoy reading Paul Johnson’s column, except when he succumbs to offensive, arbitrary and illogical arguments in favour of the existence of a beneficent deity (And another thing, 14 October). As Richard Dawkins says in The God Delusion, it is up to believers to prove the truth of their fantasies, as it is almost impossible to prove the falsehood of what is not true when what is claimed is not empirical. Johnson jesuitically tries to switch the onus of proof.
Johnson and I shared the ankle chains of a Jesuit education, but he seems still to be manacled. To note the searing iniquities of the world, and to worship a supreme being who observes and permits them, strikes me, a dispassionate observer, as an extremely crude blasphemy (were I a believer).
Surely reason, compassionate and objective, cannot wholly have been leached from him by Stonyhurst Jesuits? Had he been one of my philosophy students, I would have found his overall performance very difficult to evaluate or commend.
Kevin Holland
Westville, South Africa
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