Religious faith and secularist views

Sir, – Further to "Religious instinct will outlive evangelical secularists" (Rite & Reason, May 30th), Brendan Hoban believes that it is a difficult truth that secularists must accept that people have a need for something that religion fills for him, but fails to see that scientific discovery does for Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry what religion does for McGahern, Heaney and O'Donohue.

His statement that secularists’ views are “not just simplistic and patronising but insulting . . . to our intelligence” could be applied by a secularist to religious views. Rather than insulting each other, would it not be better to agree to differ? – Yours, etc,

DAVID DOYLE,

Goatstown,

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Dublin 14.