Barrie Hudson’s article on Humanism (SA 21 Mar) was interesting; but it raises some fundamental principles about religion in general.

He states that surveys suggest that “about a third of us” would fall into the category of “non-religious”; but that depends what one means by ‘religion’ and the category includes people with many different views including atheists, agnostics as well as humanists.

This, of course, implies that humanism is not a religion but on the basis that any religion is a belief then theirs’ is religion because they believe that there is no after-life.

A belief is, by definition, something that cannot be proven by modern scientific methods but, contrarily, it cannot be disproven either! Science (mostly) deals in things that can be measured but I would suggest that the most important things in life – beauty, love, loyalty – cannot be measured! Yet most non-believers would accept their existence. Every civilisation known to man has had some form of religion so it would appear that man needs a God, or Gods, in which to believe.

Religions (of all varieties) have rightly been criticised for the many dreadful deeds done in the name of religion but they have almost invariably been perpetrated to preserve or expand the power of the hierarchy in charge at the time. Hence, people often confuse the acts of the church (of all varieties) with the actual teachings of Christ, Mohammed or Buddha. It is the extremists of all religions that give religion a bad name.

On one thing I hope we can all agree, the statement of Neil Davis (of the Swindon Humanists), “People can believe whatever they want, but when those beliefs start to be imposed on other people and affect other people’s lives, that’s wrong and should be challenged”.

The freedom of speech we enjoy in this country allows us all to express our beliefs, however different they may be. We can discuss and debate them but there is no need for us to fight over them.

Malcolm Morrison, Prospect Hill, Swindon