Your article Dawkins Sets Up Kids’ Camp to Groom Atheists (News, last week) begins with the Jesuitical opening line: “Give Richard Dawkins a child for a week’s summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life.” Camp Quest, is not inspired by me or influenced by me. The British version, run by Samantha Stein, follows the American model founded by Edwin and Helen Kagin, of Kentucky.

I gave the following quote to Lois Rogers: “Camp Quest encourages children to think for themselves, sceptically and rationally. There is no indoctrination, just encouragement to be open-minded, while having fun.” Isn’t that about as far from Jesuitical grooming as you could imagine? One of my dominant motivations is an abhorrence of childhood indoctrination, of atheism just as much as of religion. It is in this spirit that the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has made very modest contributions to Camp Quest.

Richard Dawkins
Oxford

Keeping faith

Maybe Dawkins’s atheist kiddy camps can educate these already overindulged middle-class children as to why more than 80% of all voluntary and charity work in this country is carried out by faith (mostly Jewish and Christian) groups. That he might prevent them from turning out to be as smug, selfish and generally joyless as the majority of adult atheists is already a lost cause, I fear.

Julie Burchill
Brighton

Literal selection

The first chapters of Genesis should never be taken literally, any more than should the 5th-century BC works called Aesop’s Fables. For example, nobody thinks that crows talk to foxes — as in the famous fable — yet few of us would dispute the fact that the moral taught is just as true today: namely, don’t listen to flatterers.

Just so, early Genesis tells us that God is the Creator; and we can clearly see that He creates through a form of evolution or natural selection. If only a confirmed literalist and fundamentalist, such as Dawkins, could perceive this, then the value of his young people’s camps might be greatly enhanced.

Brian Stowe
Great Malvern,Worcestershire

Critical to survival

Dawkins might consider the vexing question of why all societies have believed in a god or higher power. In evolutionary terms, this does suggest that such beliefs confer an advantage in terms of survival. Critical thinking is, of course, important when it comes to science and fact. But like a good detective story — and stories are also common to all cultures — solving the mystery cannot be done without all the pieces of the puzzle. Maybe the story of mankind is one such narrative? I suggest Dawkins considers this before attempting to wipe away beliefs that have served humanity well since the beginning of time.

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