The Editor, Sir:

I wholeheartedly agree with the theme of the Reverend Devon Dick's column in your edition of Thursday, September 24. There really is nothing "hard" in Ian Boyne's 'Religious Hard Talk' television shows.

May I, through this medium, humbly suggest to Boyne that, if at all feasible, he entertains a subject guaranteed to provide his TV programme with truly hard talk? In point of fact, I should think that it would furnish the media wizard with no less than, say, three to four shows before conclusion.

For the show to be as hard-talking as I'm thinking, the panel of discussants should comprise the following knowledgeable representatives of religious thought: a fundamentalist Christian, who believes every single word in the Holy Bible is literally true; a Roman Catholic, who believes that many accounts in the Bible are really didactic myths, merely intended to teach some soul-restoring truths about the deity, and an Orthodox Jew, whose Holy Scripture - the TANAKH - is, in essence, the Christian Old Testament. My suggested panel would not be complete without an atheist/agnostic who, despite his/her professed beliefs, has a truly profound knowledge and understanding of the Bible.

Virtual wager

The subject? The Old Testament's Book of Job, which opens with God engaging in a virtual wager with Satan, which directly results in the devout Job experiencing unspeakable horrors: loss of wife, family and property of every kind, followed by utter devastation of his physical health. Which is all the more confounding as Job, " a man in the land of Uz", is described in the eponymous Book as being "perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil" (Chapter 1 verse 1 - King James version).

Can there possibly be any subject that could give rise to harder religious talk than the biblical account of that wager and its unhappy results?

If the great man were ever to act on this suggestion, no conceivable physical force could budge me from my televisions during the airing of that show.

I am, etc.,

DELANO 'ZACK' HARRISON

6 Moreton Park Avenue

Kingston 10