Sir – Predictably, as soon as an atheist offers an honest and factual exposition of his perfectly mild views (John D. White, Letters, March 10), theists such as Helen Robertson accuse him of ‘aggressive bullying’ (Letters, March 17).

Over the centuries, it is theists who have been bullying, persecuting and indeed killing atheists, not the other way round.

You’d think that it might be possible nowadays to make a few mild observations on the letters page of The Oxford Times without having theists jump down your throat and have a go at you as soon as you do so. Having accusations of ‘aggressive bullying’ hurled indiscriminately for daring to open one’s mouth, is hardly the best way to endear theists to humanists and other secularists, and change their perception of the way that religion and its adherents have for far too long dictated to atheists what to think and how to behave.

On the same page, Hubert Allen resorts to the old circular argument whereby we need to believe in God just in case there is a God. Since atheists don’t accept this premise from the start, all that Mr Allen’s digs about ‘the quaint faith of atheism’ achieve is to offer further evidence, if any were needed, of the inability of theists to accept that some people hold different opinions from theirs.

Isaac Szobel, Steeple Aston