Letters

I am surprised that The Scientist should see fit to publish notone, but two such pieces of shoddy reasoning as the articles by Norbert Muller and James Magner (December 26, 1988, page 9). Neither article performs what it sets out to do (that is, prove the existence of God); both articles present arguments that actually lead to the opposite conclusion.

Muller correctly argues the necessity of some assumptions resting more or less on "faith." He provides no reason whatever for choosing a religious type of faith instead of the materialist faith that underlies science. Since the assumptions of materialism are simpler, they should be preferred, according to Occam's razor.

Magner persistently confuses "randomness" with "free will;" these are, of course, opposite and incompatible conceptions. The fact that the quantum fluctuations to which he refers are truly random means that they cannot provide evidence for any purposeful agent (whether human or...