Memes testing

In his enthusiastic review of Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith by Mathew Guest, Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner (Books, 12 September), Gerald J. Pillay urges us to make sense of the resilience of faith among university students and not to debunk it using “Richard Dawkins’ wildly imaginative notion of ‘memes’”.

However, it should be noted that the existence of memes and the spread of ideas within a culture is at least open to empirical test, whereas the existence of God is an entirely different matter.

R. E. Rawles
Honorary research fellow in psychology
University College London