10 SEPTEMBER 2005, Page 22

Sad but true

From J.M. Hallinan Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 27 August) despairs of ‘the sheer moral, emotional and intellectual emptiness of the universe’ as seen by the Dawkins–Darwinists. I felt much the same about dental extraction when faced with the truth about the Tooth Fairy. Unhappily, my feelings did not invalidate this truth. These livid polemics are probably wasted on run-of-the-mill atheists who make the commonsense (Gibbonian) observation that while all religions cannot be true, they can all be (and probably are) false. J.M. Hallinan

Linley Point, NSW, Australia