Joseph Caruana’s write-up in defence of science and reason was entitled ‘Faith: is there a clash?’ (May 24). Yes, there is. The irrationality of faith can never be reconciled with reason.

Whenever attempts were made to reconcile faith with reason, a backlash against reason and philosophy always ensued. The persecutors were the imams, the rabbis and the priests.

The victims included Ibn Rushed (Averroes), Maimonides, Abelard, Erigena, Siger of Brabant, William of Ockham, Michael Servetus, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza. At the University of Paris, the works of Aristotle were banned. Nevertheless, by the end of the 14th century, Aristotle’s impact inaugurated the disintegrationof theology.

Historian Will Durant explains: “Scholars who had learned to love philosophy refused to be subordinated to theologians who rejected philosophy.

The two studies quarrelled and parted and the rejection of reason by faith issued in the rejection of faith by reason... “The attempt to establish the faith by reason implicitly acknowledged the authority of reason; the admission, by Duns Scotus and others, that the faith could not be established by reason shattered Scholasticism and so weakened the faith that, in the 14th century, revolt broke out all along the doctrinal and ecclesiastical line.

“Aristotle’s philosophy was a Greek gift to Latin Christendom, a Trojan horse concealing a thousand hostile elements.

“These seeds of the Renaissance  and the Enlightenment were not only ‘the revenge of paganism’ over Christianity; they were also the unwitting revenge of Islam.

“Invaded in Palestine, and driven from nearly all of Spain, the Moslems transmitted their science and philosophy to Western Europe and these proved to be a disintegrating force.

“It was Avicenna and Averroes, as well as Aristotle, who infected Christianity with the germs of rationalism... When a religion consents to reason, it begins to die.”