LETTER : They deserve Dawkins diatribe

Sir: Some of your correspondents (Letters, 11, 13 March) have clearly been annoyed by Richard Dawkins's intemperate diatribe (8 March) against woolly thinking in the name of religion (or anything else). I could understand their annoyance if Professor Dawkins had expressed himself contemptuous of people merely for possessing religious faith, but I do not think he did.

Actually, are we not entitled to be just a little bit contemptuous of people, however eminent in their own fields, who allow themselves to be inveigled into pontificating in public about something they know very little about? Especially if it involves telling other people, some of whom may have studied and thought quite hard about the issue, how to behave?

Professor T J PEDLEY

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge