Religious claims can’ t be tested or verified

I MUST respond to the misrepresentation of my views presented in a number of letters (Write Back, February 24, 19 & 18).

I do not “think all religions today are as bad as the Spanish Inquisition”, nor do I deny that the products of modern technology are not disasters for mankind. Knowledge always carries the need to use it wisely.

My point is that we now have a method for generating reliable knowledge. The product of that endeavour gives us a much more reliable account of how matter and the world actually are.

This is sometimes in disagreement with the traditional knowledge from religious revelation, which many people still believe.

Revelation misleads because we have no way to test it. It often produces a mistaken attitude of certainty, or it contradicts the facts of nature. This attitude of certainty has led to horrific violence throughout history.

Assertions that scientific theories are not testable (Write Back, February 18) are mistaken: whole genome sequencing provides empirical evidence of the evolutionary history of species; measured element abundances and the microwave background confirms the hot Big Bang model.

One correspondent references Einstein to support a belief in miracles — a belief he rejected. He said the only God he could believe in was the non-personal God of Spinoza; that is, a belief in the creative potential of Nature and matter which identifies Nature as God.

Heisenberg’s claim that “atoms are not things, or facts” is pure mystification: X-ray crystallography reveals the three-dimensional structures of molecules and tunnelling microscope images of a single atom diffusing across a crystal surface are recorded, which show the reality of atoms.

The quantum uncertainty with objects as heavy as an atom is so small that they can be imaged with these tools. They behave almost classically according to wellknown laws.

NICK CANNING Coleraine, Co Londonderry