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When scientists use The THES to snipe at religious faith, their arguments often lack logic. Andrew Whitten, reviewing Richard Dawkins' A Devil's Chaplain (Books, THES , November 28), decries the "terrible consequences" of religion, and Dawkins denounces it, based on the events of 9/11, as "dangerous".

But, by Dawkins and Whitten's reasoning, they themselves must be terribly dangerous since evolutionary biologists and psychologists supplied arguments, based on Darwinian principles, in support of eugenics and Nazi racial policies.

Of course, the distortions of a minority need not discredit a system of belief - but this cuts two ways.

David Trim
Newbold College