Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1482987
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 MARCH 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 OCTOBER 2022 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications The futility of theology The media recently reported the massacre of 37 people, including 24 children – aged 2 to 5 years – at a daycare centre in Thailand. The at- tacker "started slashing the children's heads with a knife". The futility of theology to reconcile such evil with the notion of a "loving and merciful, heavenly Father" was evident in a letter sent to Thomas Hardy by an English clergyman. The sender, the Rev. Dr. A. B. Gros- sart, admired Hardy's "penetrative mind". He addressed Hardy "on a problem that is of life and death to himself" and "to the young eager in- tellects for whom he is responsible." The clergyman enumerated some of the horrors of human and animal life, and added: "The problem is how to reconcile these with the absolute goodness of God". Hardy replied that he was unable to suggest any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils with the idea of omnipotent goodness. He suggested: "Perhaps Dr. Grossart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently pub- lished Life of Darwin, and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnos- tics." Shortly after, Hardy met Leslie Stephen, a prominent intellectual (and future father of author Virginia Woolf), who informed Hardy that he too had received a similar letter from Grossart. In his reply, Stephen wrote: "As the reverend doctor was a professor of theology, and he himself only a lay- man, he should have thought it was the doctor's business to explain the difficulty to his correspondent, and not his to explain it to the doctor". John Guillaumier St Julian's No country for dogs I was reading recent articles relat- ing to dogs getting injured or even worse whilst at dog-sitters and how there are no laws or proper regula- tions which, as a dog owner who also had a bad experience, definitely re- quire more attention. Something equally not given enough importance in Malta is the ability to go out with your dog and enjoy an open space or park off-leash,something really common abroad. The only proper space to do so which isn't a small, dangerous dog park, is the Ta' Qali picnic area, though there are a number of issues with this. Times are limited, for example in 'summer' you can have your dog off- leash after 6:30pm, which currently means that it would almost already be dark out, and in winter after 4pm, which only leaves you with around 30 minutes of light at best. Not to mention that you're not able to do so on weekends in the afternoon for example. And this area keeps getting used for private events! In summer they used the only open-space dog park for Earth Garden, Beerfest, Summer- daze and now the Spartan obstacle course. Is it possible that there is no better place to host these events? These events take up a good num- ber of weeks and the amount of rub- bish left behind is still there after all this time – everything from metal beer caps, screws, cable ties, confetti, all running around on the ground and just waiting for an innocent dog to eat and cause problems. The once- green area gets totally flattened into just dirt and is only now beginning to re-grow. I obviously understand the need to host these events somewhere, but at the same time a large number of dog owners are left with no open space to let their dogs run freely and enjoy themselves together. Why does the government not allocate other areas for dogs to be left off-leash, such as the Pembroke rang- es, parts of Buskett, parts of l-Aħrax in Mellieha... I truly believe that dogs are one of the best companions and they should be given more impor- tance! Jean-Paul Navarro Via email