Atheism and Christianity produce different law and ethics.

Militant scientific atheism tells us that, biologically, a human is more intelligent but no more special than a chimpanzee or a slug.

Our noblest thoughts are just chemical reactions in our brains.

Kindness is just an evolutionary self-centred survival mechanism.

In human history each of us and our career-building, money-making, values and hard work will be forgotten within a few years.

In a universe of almost infinite time and space, to believe that the human race has any ultimate significance or value at all is illogical, unscientific and delusional - if you are an atheist.

Morality, justice and freedom are all just temporary artificial human constructs with no ultimate or absolute meaning at all.

Of course atheists cannot live with the logical implications of this belief.

They must have some kind of moral absolute to assess behaviour, usually consisting, as with your correspondents, of vague concepts such as ‘modern morality’, the norms of 2011, ‘the law’ (of what eras? in which countries?), a maturing country, ‘improving areas’ - all philosophically meaningless.

If, however, every human being was individually created and is infinitely loved by God then that’s a different story for law and ethics.

Alastair Bates, Sidmouth, Devon