Last updated 09:40, Friday, 02 May 2008

I would like to respond to last week’s letter written by a group of Cumbrian humanists (The Cumberland News, April 25).

While I wholeheartedly welcome the support of anybody in our attempt to stand up to racism in Carlisle, I cannot allow their obvious errors to stand.

It is incorrect to suggest that the majority of the UK population hold no religious beliefs.

When questioned in the 2001 census, 77 per cent of the population voluntarily described themselves as Christians and 85 per cent described themselves as belonging to a religion.

Unless somebody has invented some new and bizarre method of interpreting statistics it is the minority, 15 per cent of the population, who hold no religious belief.

All human beings must take responsibility for the evils of our history and learn from them. This applies particularly to religious and racial conflict.

However, I would like to point out that the great wars and massacres of the last century, some involving the ugliest face of racial discrimination, were caused by Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin and Hitler, all of whom were militant atheists.

I, for one, have a far greater fear of the rise of atheism in our society than I do of the rise of the religion of love, tolerance and peace founded by Christ.

BEN PHILLIPS
Vicar of Stanwix
Carlisle

• Further to the letters regarding racism, I would like to express my dismay at the letter signed by members of the Cumbria Humanist Group.

If they read the letter from Christian leaders in Carlisle, they would not find any implication that they believed they were the only group in Carlisle or anywhere else, to be against racism.

The opening paragraph of the humanists’ letter seems unnecessarily defensive when no-one was thinking about them, much less attacking them.

The main cause of my dismay, however, is in their statement that racial tension has been exacerbated by religious conflict.

This is simply untrue. While it cannot be denied that there has been and, unfortunately, still is religious tension, no religious group can be accused of being mixed up in racial tension.

Are they suggesting that the mindless thugs who attack, verbally and physically, their fellow men on the grounds of skin colour or country of birth are Christian, Muslim, Bhuddist or that they belong to any religious group at all?

I rather think that they belong to those who do not have any religious belief at all.

BARBARA EDEN
Broad Street
Carlisle