Sir: Quintin Hogg's undoubted forensic ability
seems to have let him down in his reply to Ken- neth -Allsop's article On religion (21 June). He upbraids Allsop for his bankrupt post-Christian sentimentality, and attacks him for `pinning his faith' to a quotation Mich poor Allsop does not pin anything to, but merely produces among other quotations in postulation of certain eternal qu,estiorts, using a futuristic setting.
The tone of Hogg's article is supercilious, e.g. where consciousness has progressed to the ceu- tral mystery, then one is on one's own etc. Here kis interesting to ask whether the word mystery is nsed in its secondary sense of 'religious truth divinely revealed,' or in its primary sense of. 'inexplicable matter'?
Hogg is angry with Alhop for mustering a respectable collection of quotations from re- ligious and lay writers who have Vied to find.
thq; ,aucLhim 0.071024)411 .
lack of positive intellectual content. But Hogg's own intellectual position in reply seenis to rely on a development of the platitude that ultimate reality is unknowable. So this is really where we came in. Perhaps Hogg knows—which I don't—that Allsop is an atheist? From the latter's article I should have thought he is a hopeful or even unhopeful seeker after truth, like the rest of us.
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