18 AUGUST 1967, Page 23

Technology: the breaking point

Sir: What Christophei Booker writes in his Article (4 August) has much force and validity, but he is very far from the realities of the matter when he makes religion and 'the Lord' participants in the formation of a new concept of man and his environ- ment, and when he insinuates, as a corollary, that agnosticism cannot-achieve an 'inner peace.'

The new concept of which Christopher Booker and your previous contributors write is essentially a product of the true western mind uncontam:n.tted by religion or notions of 'the Lord.' The western mind is characterised by an objective, inquiring and sceptical approach, and these characteristics. after 1,600 years of submersion under the ocean of religi- ous superstition, are at last reasserting themselves in accordance with their natural propensities. Re- ligion and the Lord, on the other hand, have ever been on the side of the superstitious, the static and the established; and they do not, and cannot have, any part in the new concept. Let religion be con- tent with its long innings and at last agree to depart silently and humbly from the scene which it has for so long confused and disfigured, leaving the pure western spirit which is innately agnostic;d. to ani- mate and inspire the new concept which is strug- gling to assert itself,

M. G. K. Pierson

The Hill House. Bodenham, Herefordshire