I thought that the question of the existence of God was dead and buried (Karl Consiglio, April 12) after the plethora of exchanges during 2012. But one extract from my letter of July 12 that year is worth recalling:

For me miracles (which were denied at the time) are the confirmation of Jesus’s (whose existence was also denied at the time) divine authority and it would be futile to claim that they cannot, or do not happen. If there’s a God who can create a universe out of nothing, then there’s one who can work out miracles.

William Lane Craig wrote: both philosophically and scientifically it would not be amiss to state that the universe and time itself had a beginning at some point in the finite past.

But since something cannot come out of nothing, there has to be a transcendent cause beyond space and time, which brought the universe into being.

As for the rest, I would like to thank Consiglio for giving me the opportunity of writing my swan-song letter, because I would not like to tax readers’ time and space any further because to question perfectly valid proof of other matters would be unreasonable.

But it is not coercive. It cannot force conviction on the prejudiced or the foolish. For prejudice and folly wrap the mind around with an impenetrable casing.

Thus it is a waste of time to argue with one who refuses to listen, or with one who seriously depends on absurdity; who maintains – for example – that a great work of literature is a mere chance arrangement of words, that cigarette smoking is not dangerous to health, or that thieving and drunkenness are not vices.

Folly is mere imbecility, mere incapacity of understanding, while prejudice acts like a brake on reason, impeding its natural movement.

Manifestly, then, a perfectly valid proof may not carry conviction to all. It deserves – but does not receive – universal assent.

There is a ray of hope, however, in Cardinal Basil Hume’s words: “Every saint has a past; and every sinner has a future.”