It’s a God life

Alexander Mckay (Letters, 29 October) asks for convincing suggestions as to what He/ She/it was up to during the 13.7 billion years since the “Big Bang”. A little arithmetic may help here. We know that there are around 200 billion stars in our galaxy, which seems to be about typical for galaxies in the visible universe. Recent estimates put the number of galaxies at between 100 billion and several trillion, so let’s say half a trillion. That makes 100 billion trillion stars.

Allowing 3.5 billion years for the stars to form and produce the first planets, in the following 10 billion years the creator would have to develop 10 trillion solar systems per year. With 31 million seconds in a year that comes to the job of creating 350 million solar systems per second.

Easy peasy, if you are omnipotent. But with planets like ours having around 10 billion residents, listening to requests, even once a day, would (I imagine) be a bit tiring After all, He/she/ It is still busy making (and recycling) star systems.

BILL GRAHAM Findhorn Road, Forres

Steuart Campbell (Letters, 27 October) asserts that gospel and other records cannot be relied upon, but they cannot, of course, be proved to be unreliable. His decision not to trust them is, ironically, a faith position – he believes them to be untrustworthy.

Anthony H Ross, writing long ago as Frank Morison, set out to prove the resurrection to be a myth. His exhaustive analysis of the gospel narratives persuaded him of its truth and he became a believer. He too wrote a book, Who Moved the Stone?, a classic reprinted for the tenth time in 2006.

To believe or not may not depend on intellectual acuity but on being willing to accept the implications of the choice we make.

GEOFF MILLER Newtyle, Blairgowrie