John Guillaumier’s piece titled ‘Suppression of reason in religious issues’ (August 31) is a strong diatribe against intelligent and rational adults, including some of Malta’s conservative intelligentsia who still, at least in public, cling to Catholic beliefs which contradict both reason and common sense.

Guillaumier is an avowed atheist. According to him, believers are naïve, stupid or deluded. Or, at least, they are not as clever as atheists. The few clever believers are pathetic because they need a crutch to get them through life. They have all been brainwashed mostly at a tender age.

Having been brainwashed by the likes of Richard Dawkins and others, Guillaumier has enormous difficulty in understanding why so many people – many of them just as clever as he is – manage to live by their beliefs. He wants to spoil the believers’ spiritual journey. That is mean-spirited and radically unenlightened. He significantly uses mockery rather than reason to gain adherents.

Guillaumier is smug, condescending and emits an unpleasant disdainfulness. He does not acknowledge the good aspects of the mainstream religions, only the bad. Admittedly, religious fanaticism is rife; however, for every fanatic there are countless decent persons who believe in their own version of a benevolent God, wish no harm to anyone, unselfishly persist in good deeds and demonstrate great concern for the environment.

Authentic believers make the world a slightly better place.

Guillaumier has still a lot to learn about the ambiguity of life but only if he is not too busy being a know-it-all.