Letter: Charles, Cyrus, Ashoka and the Thai king

Sir: Why do you publish letters from Richard Dawkins (letter, 29 June) when his main purpose seems to be to make snide remarks about religious faith? Today he has excelled himself with a tour de force excoriating religions that frighten children with Hell (Roman Catholics, like me, I imagine), apostates with execution (Muslims) and adulteresses with stoning (Jews, I suppose). He then actually praises the Church of England for its embarrassment about supernatural faith - damned by faint praise indeed.

The reason behind the title Defender of the Faith was to affirm the Crown in its symbolic task of upholding Christian values in a world that did need to defend them so that society could survive and faith make a real difference. One beneficiary of this was the institution of the university. I hope Professor Dawkins can appreciate this among the laments of children, sadistic stonings and capital kangaroo courts which he, no doubt, encounters every weekend in modern Oxford.

Yours sincerely,

MICHAEL MORTON

Birkenhead, Merseyside

29 June