Richard Dawkins would make short work of Jonathan Goldsmith’s musings on religion and science (25 March), ruthlessly dismissing the idea that justice exists beyond us as an ‘eternal lamp’. If science is the ultimate explanation, then justice, exactly like law, is a rapidly changing artificial human construct, determined like everything by an overriding biological survival instinct.

Humans after all are just clever animals, and justice, like law, truth, kindness and so on, is ultimately just a meaningless chemical reaction in the brain.

The idea that ‘human beings cannot change principles of justice’ has no place in a purely scientific view of the world – instead it comes straight from this country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and DNA. If there really is an ‘eternal lamp’ of justice then that strongly implies the existence of a just god. Surely, Jonathan Goldsmith can do better than ‘not to think too much about’ this ultimate issue?

Alastair Bates, Gilbert Stephens, Sidmouth, Devon