Brian Parker, one-time nuclear physicist, of Crossparks, Dartmouth, writes: Dr Boughton raises the significance of the Large Hadron Collider and the unified theory of physics. It is likely that most readers will not understand what he is talking about and, it appears, nor does Dr Boughton. This matter of the form and meaning of life was dealt with in these very pages a few years ago, when the errors in Dr Boughton's thinking were pointed out, but he persists in confusing physics and metaphysics. Perhaps an analogy will assist. Suppose you are a spaceman who has landed on a hill in English countryside somewhere. In the distance you see a country estate with a large central building and smaller ones scattered about. In this analogy the estate is an atom, the scattered units are electrons and the central building is the nucleus. The spaceman wonders what the large building is made of, so he lets off a missile, which crashes it to the ground in pieces. The pieces are bricks. These are the protons and neutrons of the estate atom. He now wonders what these bricks are made of, so he gets a large hammer and bashes them to dust. He discovers that the dust consists of crystal compounds of Alumina, Silica, Iron oxide and so on. These are the composite particles, the hadrons of the nucleus. And what are they made of? Further experimentation reveals atoms of aluminium, oxygen, silicon, iron and others. These are the elementary particles of our estate nucleus. Our spaceman is now in a position to suggest a unified theory of what the building is made of and how it is constructed. But he will have no idea at all as to who built it and why. He may have a number of hypotheses in mind, some intellectually preferable to others, but none can be fully proven. These are beliefs, in the realm of metaphysics.  Atheism is a belief, so are the theisms, some swear by the fickle finger of fate. This brings us back to Dr Boughton and the Large Hadron Collider. With luck we might indeed arrive at a unified theory of physics which explains how everything fits together. But it will not be able to prove or disprove beliefs of theism or atheism. He states that atheists are happy for believers to follow their own creed provided they 'don't sneer at the real truth'. What arrant and arrogant nonsense! It is Dr Boughton who is doing all the sneering, with his atrocious behaviour when religious matters are raised in his presence. It is he who is demonstrating religious extremism and intolerance. What he does not grasp is that his 'real truth' is no better or worse than anyone else's fundamental 'real truth'. It is all a question of belief.