Â鶹´«Ã½

How do you react when somebody calls you superstitious? Â鶹´«Ã½’s Ariadne column (4 September 1969) reported fury at the Athenian Institute of Anthropos in Greece, whose members were “throbbing with suppressed indignation”. The cause? A report by two non-Hellenes which suggested that belief in the “evil eye” – being cursed by a malign stare – was “widespread or universal” in Greece. The institute believed the report “damaged the country’s image abroad”.

The study’s authors disagreed, saying that after seven years’ work they found the population to be “superstitious and prejudiced”. In this instance, perhaps wisely, Â鶹´«Ã½ declined to take sides.

We had fewer reservations in 2001. At the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi, the great and good would consult a priest famed for supernatural powers of prediction. Nonsense, we insisted (1 September 2001). The oracle’s pronouncements were “nothing more than delirious ravings from the ancient equivalent of a glue-sniffer”. Researchers had found that Delphi’s temple of Apollo was built above a geological fault from which spring water containing dissolved gases – including ethylene – could escape. Ethylene can cause delirium and, we reported, the priest’s trance-like state could have been the result of drinking this water.

Author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, of course, is nothing but direct when it comes to any form of religion. We reviewed his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The evidence for evolution (12 September 2009) only to come to the conclusion that “you have to wonder why Dawkins wastes so much time arguing with creationists” whom we know are “not rational thinkers… driven by beliefs, not logic”.

A diplomatic course through the minefield of religion is sometimes not Â鶹´«Ã½’s preferred route.