HERE’S a challenging question for Ian Robson, Eric Gendle (HAS, both Jan 17) and fellow non-believer correspondents.

What explanation is there for why the bodies of some saints – who died hundreds of years ago and were buried in conditions accelerating putrefaction – now lie certifiably untreated and incorrupt, vital organs intact, in view in chapels across the world, notably St Bernadette (d1879), the Lourdes Saint, and St Catherine Laboure (d1876) in the Rue Du Bac in Paris?

The sole connection – the conspicuous clue – is their life of extreme holiness, prayer, selfgiving and service to God and mankind.

Science has offered no answer for such cases, accessible on the internet. Eminent scientists have tried. Yet for believers, no explanation is necessary: for non-believers, apparently, no explanation is possible.

Perhaps the Almighty, by choosing these cases, is making His point that such lives are worthy of emulation.

Mr Robson should know that God, the Almighty, lives in eternal present; that time, even lots of it, is irrelevant – a bit like the Supreme Gardener preparing the ground for his masterpiece – us. But gardens have “needs”.

That’s where the dinosaurs came in – bonemeal and fertiliser – grand scale.

Michael Baldasera, Darlington.

COLUMNIST Peter Mullen states, yet again, that without Christianity there would be no science (Echo, Jan 13).

Christianity did not “invent”

science. The ancient Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Egyptians made the first forays into scientific inquiry followed by the Indian and Chinese civilisations of the first millennium AD.

In fact, a lot of these ancient texts and manuscripts were preserved and rediscovered by Islamic science. This led the Muslim world to pursue and correct some earlier ideas.

Many of the discoveries made by Islamic scientists made their way to Europe in the 13th and 14th Centuries where, in turn, these were examined and, in some cases, improved upon by Christian scientists.

Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Bohr, Keppler, Copernicus and Pasteur were all giants of the scientific world, but their ideas did not appear out of thin air.

All civilisations have looked at the ideas of other earlier civilisations and built on their achievements. Modern science is an amalgamation, and correction, of these earlier ideas.

Dave Atkinson, Darlington.

IN reply to Ian Robson (HAS, Jan 17), Christians don’t have to believe the universe was created for human benefit. Christian or not though, you have to believe, on compelling scientific grounds, that the universe certainly looks as if it were precisely designed to enable life to exist.

The reason for saying so is that, were any one of several factors to differ, by even the tiniest amount, from its actual value, then the conditions necessary for life could never have evolved.

Take the most well-known such factor – gravity. Stronger, and stars would have collapsed in on themselves long before there was any chance of a habitable planet appearing.

Weaker, and the stars, which are formed by the action of gravity on hydrogen gas, could never have existed at all – and hence neither could planets. No planets, no life.

Such indisputable facts imply an intelligent creator, ie God.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham