Sir, Matthew Parris’s article “Shout your doubt out loud” (April 21 ) was really rather odd.

Whenever Christians embrace a cause dear to his heart, such as gay rights, he seems to dismiss it as a panic measure in the face of declining influence. He should be pleased that his views are gaining support.

Could it be that his rejection of religious belief relies upon religion remaining exactly as it was when he first rejected it? If it changes, particularly in ways that he should welcome, it ceases to be such an easy target.

Requiring religious belief to remain unchanged and unchanging through changing times is at least part of what we mean by the word “fundamentalism”. It is a dangerous and discredited tendency to which atheists are clearly not immune.

THE RT REV DR JOHN SAXBEE Bishop of Lincoln

Sir, Despite the cheers with which I greeted Matthew Parris’s piece, I still cannot see myself trumpeting my non-belief from the rooftops as he would like.

The fundamental strength of atheism to my mind is that it is based upon reason, logic, demonstrable truths and common sense, and therefore needs no strident selling.

Religion, on the other hand, having no substantive basis, has to advertise loud and often so as to keep the faithful in line and on message, for fear that they might pause and start asking questions. Totalitarian systems use the same technique.

RICHARD NEED Cheam, Surrey

Sir, Matthew Parris wants his fellow atheists to be loud, proud and passionate about their disbelief and to be ready with “paintbrushes, chisels and cans of aerosol spray”.

Apart from the fact that atheists, because of their ready access to the secularist media, having no need of aerosol spray, and having not been particularly silent in the past few years, it is slightly worrying that Mr Parris cites Nietzsche in his support. This is the same Nietzsche who wrote: “I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind . . .”

I suspect that disbelief in the form of the atheist fundamentalism espoused by Mr Parris, Richard Dawkins et al (“religion is a virus which needs to be eradicated”) is more likely to be a destructive and oppressive force, rather than the “redeeming, saving force” of Mr Parris’s dreams.

DAVID A. ROBERTSON Dundee

Sir, An agnostic is not someone who has a “sense that we lack certitude”; it is someone who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.

So surely that makes all us unbelievers agnostics.

STEUART CAMPBELL Edinburgh

Sir, People should believe what they want to believe and I am sure that the ability is implanted in their genes.

In his old age, Isaac Newton said that all his life he had searched for the truth but he had come, at last, to realise that people prefer mysteries.

WIN CLAVERING Grantham, Lincs

Sir, If Mr Parris’s challenge to us makes people of all faiths better at expressing the reason for their hope, then as he says disbelief “can be a redeeming, saving force”.

I hope he can continue to challenge us and we respond.

MONSIGNOR KEVIN MCGINNELL Luton

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