LETTERS

Polite debate

Nigel Watson reported on the suggestion that the ancient aliens thesis was inherently racist because it refused to acknowledge the ability of people of colour to construct impressive edifices [FT409:32]. Now, while I don’t deny that some aficionados of ancient aliens may be bigots, for me, as someone who has followed the genre ever since von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods was serialised in a Sunday newspaper back in the 1960s (as ‘Was God a Spaceman?’), I never got a sense that racism was a significant factor. Rather, it seemed to be driven by a desire to embarrass plodding, conventional historians by showing them how ‘outside the box’ thinking could revolutionise their areas of expertise. And there was also the seductive mixture of ancient history and aliens. Furthermore, Stonehenge and Carnac also got the ancient aliens treatment and, as far as I’m aware, no one ever maintained they were constructed by people of colour.

• I was struck by the similarities between James Randi and Richard Dawkins that emerged in the readers’ letters about the former [] and the obituary of Reverend John Polkinghorne [] regarding the latter. Both Dawkins and Randi came across as extremely rigid in their views, closed-minded and uncompromising – ironically, the very qualities often attributed to religious fanatics. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter if you are a sceptic or a believer just as long as you are prepared to engage in polite and meaningful