I am not sure what to make of R W Rowatt's contribution (October 19) to the ongoing saga on intelligent design in your columns. He appears to claim, surely tongue-in-cheek, his belief in an infinite God on the basis of the fact that uncomprehending acceptance of the existence of infinity had got him usefully through past mathematical inquisition. Is this what is known as "hedging your bets"? At any rate, the reasoning is mathematically flawed.

I do not know what I can do for his theology but I can put him straight, belatedly, on his mathematics. The term "infinity" is never used existentially in mathematics. Adjectivally, yes. An "infinite set", for example, is one that is as numerous as one of its proper subsets. It is also used quasi-verbally. A variable "tends to infinity", for example, if, because of its dependencies, it may assume arbitrarily large values. But the term is never used nominatively, that is, to name something already existing. That is wholly consistent with our experience of things, which is resolutely finite.

Mathematics apart, if the phrase "infinite God" is intended to imply God = Infinity (both existing and both the same thing) there might be valid objection on the grounds that the right-hand side of this equation is an undefined (existentially vacuous) term; thus nicely avoiding the on-going difficulty about existence of the left-hand side. If the term "infinite" is being used descriptively, then the phrase is a mere tautology.

How far all this gets us down the path of confronting intelligent design is not so certain.

Darrell Desbrow, Overholm, Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbrightshire.

Stephen Middlemass (Letters, October 20) states that atheism is not a faith position and compares believing in something to stamp collecting. I agree that most people who do not collect stamps do not have a hobby, and that most people in the west of Scotland do not have a faith position. But this does not make them atheists or even agnostic: they simply don't think about it.

However, I would suggest that people who campaign against stamp collecting do have a position with regard to that hobby. Atheists have a clearly-defined faith position. They believe that there is no God. They believe that science vindicates them.

Science has no greater an answer as to what created us than faith and what will happen to us at the end of time, if indeed it has an end. Atheists will, therefore, continue to argue about this with people of faiths but those engaging in the argument are definitely promoting a faith position.

I am a church-goer and I find nothing in science to shake my belief. Indeed, I believe God created the universe with the Big Bang and the laws of physics. Thus, scientific discovery serves to deepen my awe at what God has done.

Paul D Kearns, 109A Millburn Avenue, Clydebank.

I thank Dr Colin McLeod for his detailed description (Letters, October 20) of the means by which whales suckle their young, and I apologise for my own erroneous over-simplistic layman's misconception as to how such a procedure takes place.

However, it seems to me that the detailed and complex process Dr McLeod describes only goes to re-inforce my point. How could such mechanisms exist if the genetic blueprint for their development is not the result of an intelligent design? Such mechanisms do not seem to admit of transitional adaptive evolutionary forms, for unless perfectly fit for the purpose at each stage of the evolution of the whale, such forms would have no survival value, and the species would not survive.

Joe Pieri, 11 Bishopsgate, Kenmure Drive, Bishopbriggs, Glasgow.

The debate between theists and atheists rumbles on without resolution, as it inevitably must. Theists throw up examples of intelligent design (ID) and the atheists shoot them down.

But so far there has been no contribution from the believers in Development of Unintelligent Design (DUD).

Examples of this in human anatomy include: the appendix, which has no known function but if it gets infected it can kill you; the windpipe being next to the gullet means choking is not uncommon (whales, it would appear, have better luck); our genome is littered with "jumping" genes (parasitic DNA) that can cause genetic diseases; the female pelvis, as a consequence of walking upright, has made giving birth more dangerous for women than for any other primate; structural weaknesses in the feet are a result of walking on the "wrists" of our lower limbs; our retinas are prone to detachment.

There are at least 15 further examples of DUD in the human anatomy. They are either evolution's greatest mistakes or God's greatest mistakes.

But which?

George Baxter Smith, Harlaw, Jamestown, Strathpeffer.