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Mr Martin - why do you say that 'conscience' is "always a religious idea"? My dictionary (Chambers) defines the word as "the sense of moral correctness that governs or influences a person's actions or thoughts." No mention of religion there.

Yet, whatever the source of our sense of moral correctness, I would want our politicians, whether people of faith or of none, to make decisions and act out of a sense of moral correctness, rather than be forced to cast their votes one way or another on the say so of a body of people in their constituencies whose aggregate views on particular issues could change from hour to hour, depending upon what is trending in social media (where analysis of even complex issues is to be expressed in 140 characters or fewer). I really do not want issues to be decided in particular ways just because enough of the population have been swayed by the hidden activities of a group of Russian internet trolls bent on manipulating the democratic system.

As to the position of neuro-scientists, it is by no means clear that there is any kind of consensus about the idea that we act before we have actually decided to do so. The experiments that have led to comments along these lines involved examining electrical activity in the brains of humans whilst they sought to make decisions about pressing buttons. The functioning of the brain is exceedingly complex and I venture to suggest that making considered decisions about complex issues involving the weighing of evidence and making judgments about what is best for our fellow citizens is not to be compared with pressing buttons.

There are clearly different levels of conscious activity and decision-making (as everyone who has had the sensation of realising that they have been driving for 10-15 minutes 'on autopilot', whilst focusing their thinking on some other issue, can testify). That does not negate the ability of humans to make real decisions about important issues.

Were the position to be otherwise, we might just as well dispense with the whole justice system, as all judges would then simply be acting in accordance with the outcome of chemical reactions in their brains. Their belief that they are doing important 'free will' things, like weighing the evidence and administering 'justice', would merely be illusions conjured up by their mechanistic brains.

By the same token, there would be little point in our posting our thoughts on the LSG website, as it would just be the chemicals in each of our brains reacting to the symbols that have been produced by the other's.