Rose Harvie says that "at last" Iain Macwhirter has had the courage to put into print what she feels about religion (Topic of the week: God and free speech, Letters, January 25).

"At last"? Where has she been sleeping for the last 15 years or more? Such attacks on religion have been commonplace for at least that long - whole books have been written and become bestsellers. You could almost (though not quite) say that it takes courage to defend religion these days. Whatever one's own view, it really is stretching credulity to think that someone has "at last had the courage" to say this kind of thing.

William Whitson

Bathgate

The religiose are at it again. They continue to conflate not believing with a belief system, presumably to reinforce their argument that non-believers are some sort of religious organisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. They believe in something in which I do not. I live in a world of archaeological, geological and physical evidence that the Earth was not created in six days, is older than 6,000 years by an order of magnitude and we do not have human ancestors who walked with dinosaurs.

The evidence is there for those with an open mind to see. If adherents to the many "faiths" which are unable to agree on much outside of the "fact" that atheism is a religion, cannot accept this evidence that is entirely their choice and their right. That right stops at the school gates.

I have seen no evidence that any god exists, despite growing up in a highly religious household. I listened to the dogma, because I had no choice, realised it was not evidence, and rejected it.

When Mr Maan, Mr Cook and anyone else can demonstrate to me the existence of a god I will accept it. I will not worship it, appease it nor indoctrinate anyone's children in accepting its reality.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines belief as the acceptance of something without direct evidence. Atheism is not defined as a belief but as the rejection of the proposition that a god exists because there is no evidence that he, she or it does.

Les Hunter

Lanark