God or genius, depends on view
I refer to R. Oliver's letter "Genius of Mozart was not God-given".
I think the author of this letter believes there is no God, no spiritual realm overlapping and beyond the material world.
To combat such a belief, materialists have to find a 'natural' plausible explanation to account for the sudden appearance experience of unusual genius such as Mozart.
But both explanations are not mutually exclusive.
Natural mechanism explains what happens in mental matters including genius, why it happens, when it happens and its significance may be explained as a combination of genetics, circumstance and nature and divinely given evolution or intervention your answer depends on your basic desire or assumptions, god or no god at work.
You can neither prove nor disprove either explanation. You interpret the evidence as you will!
Rev. Fr. M. Stark, Highfields
Genius of Mozart was not God-given
In his letter (Mailbox, August 21), Sean Coltman rebuffs the claims by E Letts regarding God-given talent (Mailbox, August 18).
I entirely agree with Mr Coltman. Talent is a purely natural ability which many people have in all walks of life: some are especially gifted and may stand head and shoulders above their contemporaries, while others may only achieve mediocrity.
Those who have only a modicum of talent may find this can be developed to quite a high standard by assiduous study and practice; a person of truly outstanding ability in a particular subject will, however, charge ahead much quicker than those who are less fortunate.
If talent was God-given then we would have to say that He supported favouritism: why create a Mozart or a Michelangelo and overlook others? We cannot all be geniuses. If we were, supreme talent would be regarded as so commonplace as to not be worth mentioning. Perhaps it is just as well that many of us have to be satisfied with being ordinary – after all, that's life.
R Oliver, South Wigston
