Sir - I have two problems with Tony Augarde's comments on the Dawkins TV programme The Enemies of Reason (Weekend, August 17):
1: Surely it is not for Dawkins to prove the speciousness of such activities as astrology and spiritualism, as for their practitioners to demonstrate their validity. Doubt was cast on them in the programme; maybe a response from their protagonists will come - we shall see.
2: The idea that Dawkins is a fundamentalist because he asks for the justification in terms of research evidence for what he claims are superstitious beliefs. The question is indeed a fundamental one, but I wonder why Augarde uses the term fundamentalist, that is so regarded as pejorative in similar contexts.
In my own view what Augarde sees as fundamentalist in Dawkins is indeed the most fundamental question of the whole science/religion debate; why should some classes of information be segregated from dispassionate scrutiny and put in a class where its application is claimed to be inappropriate - what justification for that is offered?
Robert Dyer, Kingston Bagpuize
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