I was quite delighted to find all three pages of your Science and Technology Section dedicated to the science of religion, one of my favorite subjects (“Where Angels no Longer Fear to Tread,” March 22, 2008). Wow! As you say at the outset, religion cries out for a biological explanation. Two million euros for European scientific collaboration on “Explaining Religion,” as the project is known, is not too big a price to pay, either. The money goes to finance a four-year research project in fourteen universities in fields ranging from psychology to economics.

The rest of your article is rather dispiriting, though. Snapshots of sundry research endeavors reported leave much to the reader’s imagination, especially when it comes to putting Humpty Dumpty together again. Although they may add to our knowledge, they hardly justify the fuss about explaining no less than religion. In fact, it is hard to imagine this sort of research ever leading to breakthroughs of any kind, let alone in this awkward domain fraught with untold difficulties. God is quite likely to have the last laugh here, as you cheerfully suggest in your last sentence.

Besides, the list of universities mentioned in your article is rather startling. Here they go, in the order of their appearance: Boston University, University of Hawaii at Hilo, University of Pennsylvania, University of Connecticut, Tel Aviv University, McMaster University in Canada, Ben-Gurion University in Israel, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Queen’s University in Belfast, Binghamton University in New York, and Webster University in St. Louis. If this is a worthy example of European scientific collaboration, as you say in the very first paragraph of your article, it is difficult to imagine all the others.