It seems our politicians agree that the riots are a sign of a breakdown in our society, but as to why and what to do they are silent or simply populist.

One approach that gets little if any time is to understand that people behave according to their world view and react to circumstances in ways that relate to it. If Dawkins and Darwin are right, and life is really no more than a series of natural chance occurrences, in which survival and reproduction is our sole reason for existing, nothing is actually going wrong – ‘This is how life is. Just get on with it’. Their ‘science’ says we should ‘eat, drink and be merry; for tomorrow we die’.Of course, Dawkins and Darwin are completely wrong.

We are not evolved pond scum and there is no ‘tree of life’ in truth to show we are. But sadly we have found their lie attractive and for decades have taken God out of our society, our education, our government, and our legislature, and denied our accountability.

It is no good crying over the lack of morality while we insist there is no such thing as absolute truth. Who, then, is to say that violence and theft is always bad? Or that any barbarous act is always evil?

What we are seeing working out is the result of moral relativism in our culture that says whatever seems good to you is ok. Just do it. Everyone wants to be a law unto themselves.

It was not, as often misquoted, the Tree of Knowledge which was forbidden in Eden but the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the ability and authority to decide for ourselves what is good or evil. “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Sadly we have and we are.

ALAN BOURNE Steventon Road Drayton