No intellectual Houdini act can reconcile faith and evolution

IT would be nice if all intellectual differences could be resolved by fiat.

Sean Fitzgerald (‘No conflict between faith and evolution’, Letters, November 5)) seems to think this is a perfectly reasonable approach. All you need do is quote the pronouncements of one or two popes and the difficulties just vanish. He studiously avoids offering any explanations that might reconcile the Genesis story of creation with the findings of modern science.

Of course the difficulties would disappear if people, including popes, stopped claiming that the Pentateuch is history or science or cosmology and accepted that it is a story of one people’s view of themselves and, as such, a very valuable and interesting insight into one ancient human culture just like the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the origin myths of the Amerindians or the origin stories of the Aztecs or Incas.