I spent many years of my life in advertising and I note that the Humanist Society’s bus advertisement (In God we bus, The Press, January 9) fulfills one of the major tasks required by an advertiser, namely to comfort the readers and assure them that in choosing what the advertiser offered, she or he made a good choice.

It speaks to the comfortably off in this society. The phrase “and enjoy your life” in this context is as full of selfish meaning as the slogan: “Because you’re worth it.” Do humanists really want to be equated with consumerism? What do they think the advertisement: “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life,” would say to people in Palestine, or the Congo, or Zimbabwe?

In such societies religion is indeed the “opiate of the people”, in that it offers hope and makes a life of want and human-imposed misery more bearable.

The non-religious alternative programme for achieving a better life for the disadvantaged is no longer available; the atheist guardians having sold out to capitalism.

If the humanists cannot see that for many the hope of the coming of “the Kingdom of God” is more attractive than a mere change of government or of trade agreements between the elites, they must lead very closed lives.

There may well be some believers whose “blind faith” may provide a set of rules that removes the need for them to think and worry about their responsibility for their actions, but for humanists to make that point requires an advertisement that says exactly the opposite to the one on the York buses.

Maurice Vassie, Cartmans Cottage, Deighton, York.

• You have printed some rubbish from “the humanist councillor” in the past, but this effort takes the biscuit (Well is there?, The Press, January 12). How can abstinence from sex help the spread of Aids?

Shouldn’t the caption have read “the humorist councillor”? He’s one huge joke.

K Barnes, North View, Catterton, Tadcaster.