This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
Proof/probability divide enduring
May I make two points, one in particular and one general about the Christian v atheist argument, which has surely gone on long enough?
Mr Pendragon (July 31) fails to grasp what kind of history was written in classical times – and, indeed, much more recently.
Independent, unbiased historians could not exist before the days of printing and universities with history departments.
Josephus – the only historian who could matter in the context of the Holy Land – and his contemporaries were, like poets of the time, spin doctors, writing what pleased the Roman establishment.
In general, there will always be a division between people who insist on absolute proof, as with the famous square on the hypotenuse, and those of us – including me; I am a Christian – who are content with experience and the balance of probability, not only in religious contexts.
That is one reason why the proposal by the House of Lords to make all A-level courses include maths will fail to produce more engineers, though it will produce worse historians, worse linguists and so on, if it makes any difference at all.
What we need are not more round pegs but more square holes, to accommodate the human race in all its variety.
Veronica M Brown, Wigston
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