The ideas and values of western humanism are derived from Christianity

In her Scottish Perspective contribution, ‘You may already be a humanist’ (18 August), Alice Roberts makes some challengeable assumptions about the basis of her humanist worldview and about the basis of religious belief.

Dr Roberts believes that human beings can devise a compassionate value system through rational thought. If she were to read Dominion, by Tom holland, she might reflect on his argument that had it not been for the emergence of Christianity then humanist values would not exist, as the tyrannical value system of the Roman Empire would not have been challenged by the alternative offered by that of Christianity, that of self-sacrificial love. The ideals and values of humanism in the western world developed upon that foundation.

Additionally, if there is no transcendent Truth behind the universe then any such value system that Alice Roberts

might believe to be “good” has no more validity than any alternative value system.

Dr Roberts also seems not to understand the religious worldview. To equate belief in God to belief in fairies and unicorns is simply fatuous.

Should it exist, any such entity would be a contingent being, part of the contingent universe.

The word God refers not to a posited contingent entity, but to the transcendent, non-contingent source of all being, the cause and sustainer of our universe.

Dr roberts offers a few examples of the writings she finds inspiring, such as expressions of appreciation at the beauty found in the natural world. They are inspiring and as I read them, I reflect with wonder on the divine source of a universe in which consciousness could emerge, allowing beings such as humans to experience it and to express their experiences to others.

I think that is as rationally defensible a position to take as that taken by Alice Roberts.

KEITH WILSON St Teresa Place, Edinburgh

“You may already be a humanist” writes Professor Alice Roberts,claiming that“there’s no evidence for a divine presence in the world”. She then offers a quotation from the late fenn er brock waymp :“my spirit reached out and became one with the spirit of the sea and sky I was one with the universe beyond.”

This is classic pantheism, not humanism. It recalls – and may have been influenced by – Wordsworth’s classic poem Tintern Abbey, which speaks of “. . . a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused,/whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/and the round ocean and the living air,/and the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” Could it be that some humanists may be pantheists already?

JOHN COUTTS Ladysneuk Road, Stirling