Ms Midgley,

Your review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is mistaken and misleading in many ways, but today I will limit my comments to the passages where you condemn the author for writing things he did not write.

This book is one of many that celebrate an allegedly bitter war between Science and Religion …

Many books “celebrate” this “war”? Name two. And then show me where in The God Delusion it is done.

… the preface of this book cries out for the abolition of the enemy …

Have you read the words you quoted to support this charge? Let me remind you. They are: Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no Gunpowder Plot… Dawkins asks people to visualise a less violent world, and you say he “cries out for the abolition of the enemy”. What on Earth has provoked this reaction?

Religion is not really relevant … unless we carefully define ‘religion’ to link it … with atrocities. This … is the tendency of Dawkins’s book.

No, Dawkins has not done this. (Nor, of course, would one need such careful definition to establish such a link. A cursory reading of the Christian and Muslim “holy scriptures” is sufficient.)

Finally, Mr. Dawkins has never expressed a

crass refusal to admit the complexity of life.

What a bizarre accusation! He obviously loves the complexity of life; you can see it in every one of his books.

Really, if you don’t mind me saying so, Mary — you should stop reading Dawkins if he upsets you so.