Having avoided answering two very straightforward questions that I asked him on 20th October, which I reduced to one simple question for his convenience on 25th October, R.M.B. Senanayake has responded by ‘return of post’ (as is not unusual with him) to Eymard de Silva Wijeyeratne’s erudite article titled ‘Science is not for the cocksure’ which appeared in The Island on 28th October. Taking amiss a general comment that Eymard made about the "impression created by many that science constitutes an aggressive thrust based on the combination of reason and observation that challenges the boundaries of knowledge….." it was indeed amusing to see RMB pleading not guilty of the crime, and pointing the accusing finger at me!

I know of no instance where I have tried to create any such impression, and I do not know enough of science or religion to even attempt it. The only crime I committed was to ask my old colleague in the public service as to why he singled out Buddhists and Hindus to be subjected to what Eymard aptly calls "laboratory apartheid"!

I have at no stage said or claimed that Buddhism is on all fours with science, as science deals with the material world whereas Buddhism, like other religions, deals with the spiritual. By quoting the Buddha’s exhortation to the Kalamas, I only tried to show that Buddhism eschews dogma unlike most other religions which have received a clean bill of health from RMB to enter the laboratory of science. If it were not so, it is hardly likely that Albert Einstein, the foremost scientist of the 20th century, would have said that "if there is any religion that can cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism". Einstein, obviously, did not say Buddhism is concerned with anything other than the spiritual, but he saw that the Buddhist outlook on what RMB would like to call "the objective external world" does not pose a serious problem for science, unlike other religions that he knew of. Surely, only one or the other (Einstein or RMB) can be right!

At one point in his response to Eymard, RMB says that his remark about Buddhism was just "a chance remark". What I understand from a chance remark is a casual, unintentional or ‘not well thought out’ remark from which one can easily bail-out (an oft-used word these days in the world of economics and finance which RMB is more familiar with!). But, two sentences later, he re-iterates his basic thesis that "the denial (in Buddhism) of an objective world is totally against the assumptions of science and makes science itself a meaningless effort." I need, therefore, to insist that he answers the question/s that I posed in my two previous interventions which he has so far dodged!

In conclusion, I cannot help pointing out that RMB’s attempt to place the hounding out of Ven. Pelpola Vipassi by the Buddhist clergy for wanting to become a Mahayana monk on par with the fate Galileo suffered at the hands of the Roman Inquisition is laughable. Would Ven. Vipassi or anyone else becoming a Mahayana monk (or not) have been of any consequence for advancing the frontiers of science?

[Correction: The title of Richard Dawkins’ book that I referred to on 25th October should read as ‘The God Delusion’ and not ‘The God Illusion’. The error is regretted.]