LETTER: Thought for the day

From Mr Thomas Dalby Sir: The recent demands made by humanists for the admission of the secularist viewpoint to school assemblies and Radio 4's Thought for the Day, as elucidated by David Bothwell among others (letter, 20 December), rather miss the pointof both institutions. The function of assemblies and Thought for the Day is to provide a short time of reflection in an otherwise fiercely secular environment.

An argument that the secularist's view is under-represented, either in schools or on the radio, is simply insupportable. The heavy hand of Enlightenment thinking informs the content and perspective of most of what is said in the classroom or over the air.

I do not dispute Mr Bothwell's assertion that secularist moral thinking is of the highest calibre, but I do not see what positive addition it can make to traditional theistic moral teaching. I rather suspect that it is a deletion from moral thought, namely God, that the secularists wish to make.

Yours etc, THOMAS DALBY Wigston, Leicestershire 20 December