LETTER:Christians did not invent morality

Sir: Why are we always being told ("How much intolerance can we tolerate?", 4 March) that our secular society lives on the capital of "Judaeo-Christian moral values"?

Which are they? Get married? Tell the truth? Keep your promises? Don't steal? Don't murder? These are all taken for granted by Homer, and by ancient Greek writers in general, hundreds of years before Christianity. They also exist in societies outside the orbit of Christianity from China to Peru.

They are human values. Their existence does not depend on religious belief, and there is no proof that they are in any way strengthened by it.

Professor Maurice Pope

Oxford