From Fr Brian Storey SIR – Brendan Kennedy’s reflections on religion and neuroscience (Comment, January 8), can be helped by a philosophical description of spirituality; the description has of course to be negative, namely the “absence of the material”. Sensations are frequently wrongly described as spiritual. While such can be the result of spiritual pursuit, they are often false and illusory.
There is much help in the thought that we know more of what God is not than we know of what He is. Moreover, it is in the very search for God in an increasingly lost situation, that we find Him. Less than that is still focusing much into the personal psyche.
While science is especially stimulating, its findings necessarily always remain in the realm of what is material. That’s why I believe Richard Dawkins wisely leaves the door slightly ajar. God, spirituality and grace are permanently supernatural, invisible and intangible.
Yours faithfully, BRYAN STOREY St Paul the Apostle, Tintagel, Cornwall