After taking a personal turn against me, Frank Muscat (November 10) retold his pet story about an atheist who turned Christian.

Next, he tried to bolster his belief in God by quoting Al-Ghazali, a medieval Muslim mystic.

Muscat forgot to mention that Al-Ghazali professed to feel the eyes and threats of a stern deity close over his head and proclaimed anew the horrors of the Mohammedan hell.

Nor did Muscat allude to the fact that, after Al-Ghazali, Islam shunned speculative thought, the pursuit of science in the Muslim world waned and the mind of Islam more and more buried itself in the Hadith and the Koran.

Finally, Mr Muscat quotes Karen Armstrong’s mystics who use music, dancing, poetry, stories and fiction “to express this reality that goes beyond concepts”.

This kind of statement is called “begging the question”, in other words, taking for granted the truth of something that needs to be proved before your statement can be accepted.

While purporting to respond to my letter on faith and reason, Muscat did not comment on the historical facts in my letter, such as the fact that the Catholic Church persecuted medieval scholars who tried to reconcile faith and reason.

The victims included Erigena, William of Ockham, Siger of Brabant and Abelard.

Faith and reason are incompatible, as I pointed out in my previous letter, when I quoted historian Will Durant: “(Medieval) 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 fourteenth century, revolt broke out all along the doctrinal and ecclesiastical line.”