Richard Dawkins is wrong in saying that the 19th century saw the triumph of science over religion. The battle rattled on into the 20th century and was more an armistice: a tacit agreement about where the boundaries lay. On one side, science would deal with repeatedly observable physical phenomena and theories capable of confirmation or refutation. On the other, metaphysics and the "humanities" would deal with phenomena that may be just as real but not so tidy. The existence of a deity is surely a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.
Alan Hewitt
Portsmouth University