If gene doping and a 500-year-old mystery manuscript weren't intriguing enough, July's issue included nothing less than God and taxes.

In "God's Number Is Up" [Skeptic], Michael Shermer used Bayesian probabilities to peg the likelihood of a supreme being at 2 percent, which led William Orem of Waltham, Mass., to write, "Until a theist presents some credible evidence for the existence of his or her particular god, atheism is the rational position of default. As long as gods stay in the magical realm, the question of their existence is not scientifically insoluble; it is a nonquestion." John Walsh of Arlington, Tex., registered his amazement that "Shermer finds the probability of the existence of God a mere mathematical puzzle, while the dogged search for dark matter and dark energy based on inference gains popularity." And although no one denies the existence of taxes, it is just as certain that everyone will have an opinion about them, as with genetic modification.

This article was originally published with the title Letters.

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