It was one of those books which was so "talked about", so hyped, that, out of perverse principle, I made a point of ignoring it. Further to that, I had heard the author sounding off on some television programme and he had come across as a pompous and opinionated twerp. I am talking, of course, of Richard Dawkins and his best-selling "The God Delusion". I had previously come across (but not actually read - a Pierre Bayard HB) his earlier work "The Selfish Gene". I am in no sense a militant anti-geneticist, but my response was that this was another "just" argument: human life is "just" this, the meaning of existence is "just" that; my own feeling is that, whichever way you look at it, the fact of being alive at all is deeply mysterious and certainly never "just" anything. Reductionism is basically a way for the reductionists to think they're in control of things. My position was that of an anti-reductionist agnostic, who, among other things, thought that life was probably too short to be spending too much of it reading Richard Dawkins books.

Then Carol picked up "The God Delusion" at a station bookstall - just something to pass the journey - but, my curiosity getting the better of me, I had soon purloined it and was ploughing my way through it. It's a good read. A combination of heated invective and ruthless argument makes it a real page-turner. When you finish, however, you do breathe an inner sigh of relief as you realise that you have been listening to a man shouting at the top of his voice for 420 pages! It is this tone of intolerant insistence that betrays him. The core of his atheistic argument is really a sort of schoolboy "prove it!" - the onus is on believers to prove the existence of God, not on atheists to disprove it. Well, in that case, why get so hot under the collar about it? What point is there in trying to out-argue delusional thinkers who will anyway always be able to trump any merely rational argument by playing the faith card. Dawkins stamps and fumes like a scientific Rumplestiltskin at the injustice of it all, where an attitude of amused but patient tolerance might be more dignified and - ultimately - more convincing.

Dawkins' basic argument is that life on earth does not require any sort of supernatural intervention either to initiate or maintain it. It's really just a question of orders of magnitude. Given the infinite vastness of the universe, it was statistically probable that conditions permitting the beginnings of life would crop up somewhere. Once life gets started, natural selection gets to work. Over inconceivably long periods of geological time genetic mutations develop by exploiting their competitive advantage until finally we arrive at the acme of evolutionary creation, homo sapiens, and the acme of homo sapiens, Richard Dawkins (only kidding)! Dawkins' follow-up argument is that religion's track-record is catastrophically poor. Mankind would be far better off without the physical and psychological horrors inflicted on it in the name of religion. Human happiness requires, therefore, that we jettison delusional thinking and stand freely on our own two feet - a sort of dressed-up version of John Lennon's "Imagine".

Without sounding like some red-neck creationist nutter, there's no easy way around the evolution argument. Pursuing my inquiries, I came across a copy of "Evolution in Action" by Julian Huxley. Written in 1953, it seeks to explain some of the basic notions of evolution to the general reader. The author's calm, measured prose was a welcome antidote to Dawkins' hectic diatribe. His interpretation of evolutionary theory avoids the reductionist pitfall. He argues that evolution from single-celled creatures to man represents an undeniable progress. Man, with his unique capacities, represents a whole new evolutionary stage, a conscious stage:

In the light of evolutionary biology man can now see himself as the sole agent of further evolutionary advance on this planet, and one of the few possible instruments of progress in the universe at large.

What a tremendous responsibility! And what can we do to assume this responsibility? I turned to Julian's brother, Aldous Huxley and the introduction to his "Perennial Philosophy":

...man's final end [is] in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being...

And if the whole purpose of thousands of millions of years of evolution were the creation of beings with the potential to consciously realize Ultimate Reality? Thousands of millions of years would be as the blink of an eye in the eternal present in which all of time is encompassed. Evolution might then be seen as integral to the Cosmic Purpose of the spiritualisation of matter. What are the preconditions for us performing our evolutionary duty? Aldous Huxley again:

The Perennial Philosophy is primarily concerned with the one, divine Reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds. But the nature of this one reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfil certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit.

Richard Dawkins' bumptiousness is the opposite of any such selfless humility, and yet he cannot hide his respect for Albert Einstein's awe at the workings of Nature and the Universe. He quotes him as saying:

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuine religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

Like so many arguments, the God debate is a debate about definitions. What do you mean by mysticism? What do you mean by God? What do you mean by supernatural? What do you mean by religion? There is only ever one reality, but our level of comprehension of it depends on our inner state. The final word is for Aldous Huxley:

Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing.

Without Phil we had no car. Nigel unhesitatingly called up his son Tony in Edinburgh and, sure enough, early next morning he was screeching to a halt outside Phil's in yet another vehicule from Nigel's seemingly endless collection of fabulousy clapped-out bangers. This particular model had at some stage in its history been a Volkswagen Passat, but now had more in common with something left over from a demolition derby. The rear seats had been removed to accomodate a sort of mobile kennel for Ben and Tilly - Nigel's black labrador and Tony's fox terrier (sort of). Nigel and I piled joyously into this chaos, together with the day's special guest star, Bothy, Phil's sister's young border collie. Phil laconically warned us of the need to keep him on a lead near sheep. So off we set in a state of wheeled insanity, heading out of Callander up along the Keltie Water through clinging mist and the wooded Brackland Glen. We parked near Braeleny farm. Although we were still in mist, we could sense the sun behind it and set off optimistically towards Stùc a 'Chroin, our objective for the day. I had Bothy on the lead, or rather he me. Utterly indifferent to my vain attempts at dressage, he effectively pulled me along behind him. Border collies are notoriously inexhaustible, but this particular dog, like some child high on E-numbers, was maniacally hyper-active and hopelessly attention-deficient. By heaving violently on the lead and ordering "heel" in what I supposed to be a masterful tone, I could get him to walk beside me for about a second, max. It was going to be a long day.

Continuing up the track, we met with our first obstacle. The bridge marked on the map as crossing the main burn at the point where the Allt Breac-nic flows into it was non-existent, swept away in some previous spate no doubt. There was nothing else for it. We would have to strike overland and follow the tributary upstream until we could find a fording point. Not wishing to be dragged nose-first through the bog and seeing no sheep in the immediate vicinity, I let Bothy off his lead. It was like firing the bolt from a cross-bow. He shot off and disappeared wildly over the edge of the steep bluff leading down to the burn. I was distinctly worried. Admittedly he was only a dog, but I did not relish the prospect of explaining to Phil, or still worse, his sister, that I'd somehow managed to lose their favourite pet. As it was, although still in view, he was right out in the middle of the deepest and fastest-flowing part of the Keltie Water, emitting the most unearthly howling yelp. Clearly out of his depth and being swept along in the eddying brown water, it looked as though he might be in serious difficulty. I called him desperately, my voice betraying anxiety despite attempts at an authoritative tone. I needn't have bothered. Next thing, he was scrambling over the stones, shaking the water off his coat and racing about in a madcap play-chase with Ben and Tilly. We found a spot where we could boulder-hop across the burn and continued on up to the reservoir formed by the damming of the Allt a' Chroin. The scene at the dam was a veritable Scottish Shangri-La. We were now basking in morning sunshine, with only shreds of residual mist punctuating the mountain idyll. All about us was the Gleann a' Chroin cirque: to the north Stùc a' Chroin itself, Meall Odhar to the east, with Beinn Each and Beinn Bhreac to the west and south-west. We lingered for a while before relunctantly moving on to tackling the real work of the day.

We climbed up from the reservoir to the croft at Arivurichardich. Looking back down, we spotted a movement in the glassy surface of the water, which we fancied might be the ducking and resurfacing of an otter. From there, the path led us diagonally up the hillside, then up a steepish section to Tiol nan Tarbh, where we sat down to enjoy a first instalment of lunch. Although the climbing had been hot work, the February air cooled us quickly and we were not too proud to don fleeces and anoraks. Continuing on our way, we wandered up the easy-angled Aonach Gaineamhach to the steeper final slopes before the summit of Stùc a' Chroin. At the cairn I interrupted the meditations of a lone climber who had reached the top a bit before us. We got to talking. He was a plumber and heating engineer from Glasgow who had the freedom to organize his work in a way that enabled him to get to the hills away from the weekends. We looked north-east across to Ben Vorlich. "On a Sunday they'd be like wasps over there!" He pronounced the word with a proper open 'a', which somehow conveyed far greater contempt than the tame, bloodless 'wosp'! Nigel and Tony joined us at the summit. Gazing to the south, we surveyed the entirety of the Lowlands of Scotland covered in cloud. A classic temperature inversion meant that we were lifted like demi-gods into a magical sunlit realm far above the dreary, workaday world and its grey fog-bound cares. We felt exultant, exalted, privileged to be able to experience a moment of rare wonder soaring above the ordinary plane of quotidian hebetude.

Sheltering from the wind on the northern slopes, we had another sandwich and contemplated the hills spread out before us. Ben More and Stobinian were prominent and Ben Nevis just visible in the distance. We had toyed with the idea of making our way down the rocky northeast ridge to the Bealach an Dubh Choirein and on to Ben Vorlich. But the way home would have involved negotiating some fairly intimidating peat-hags. So we turned to the west with the intention of making the complete round of the hills above Gleann a' Chroin. So far we had been engaged in classic guide-book stuff. Now we were headed off into the intoxicating domain of pointless mountaineering. No Munros and, despite Nigel's contrived calculations, probably no Corbetts either. Climbing, in other words, which had no purpose outside itself. Clambering over otherwise neglected lumps for no reason other than the sheer hell of it! Up and down, through and around heathery banks and rocky outcrops, the dogs racing about us and ahead of us, squabbling and playing. Up and down, up and down - Creag Chroisg, Bealach Glas, Bealach nan Cabar, a steep pull onto Beinn Each, down again to the Bealach Coire nan Saighead, then finally along the long, open ridge to Sgiath a' Dobhrain. In failing light we headed steeply down to the Breac-nic burn. As day turned into night, Nigel interrupted our downward plunge: "Listen, you can hear the silence." There was a sound of a distant waterfall, but it served only to emphasize the profound hush of the world drawing breath. We skipped across the burn and opted to head straight across the moss to the road. Because of the presence of sheep I had Bothy back on a lead, fortunately by now a choker lead which Tony had somehow conjured up out of nowhere. However, this proved to be only a partial restraint and I was very nearly dragged into streams and bogs which the dog cleared effortlessly, leaving me trailing awkwardly behind. Finally we made it to terra firma and marched on down the long track, our way lit by the moon and the stars.

What is happiness? Perhaps best not to inquire too insistently for fear of frightening it away, but it surely has something to do with that sense of the abundance of life, within and without, which we experienced that day climbing Stuc a' Chroin.