Letter: Immortal Dawkins

Sir: Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker ("At the altar of the atheists", 13 February) are wrong about souls. The ghost in the machine is a confused, 17th-century idea that never had much going for it. They should read Aquinas, who holds that the soul is the form of the body.

A thought experiment on this theme: broadcast a digitalised recording of Jacqueline du Pre playing Elgar into space; blow up all worlds with atmospheres - the music is dead. But its form, exact, intensely personal, lasts as long as the radio signals radiate, which recent physics suggests might be for ever.

If we could digitalise the bodily histories of Dawkins and Pinker, they too could be preserved in ever expanding radiant arcs. Perhaps God has something like this in mind for them.

WILLIAM MYERS

Leicester