18 MARCH 2000, Page 32

From Sir Ludovic Kennedy Sir: Charles FitzGerald thinks I am

clever to be an atheist. Not so, but at least honest in declining to pay lip-service to a creed I can- not subscribe to. He says he misses 'the guid- ance from above — the whispered voice of conscience'. Does he not realise that all gods, being creatures of the imagination, have no characteristics of their own, only those power, mercy, love, etc. — which over the years humans have ascribed to them? Athe- ists have consciences, too, and the whispered voices are their own, human altruism being universal and analogous to what the Chris- tian Churches like to call Christian values.

Ludovic Kennedy

Ashdown, Avebury, Wiltshire