Good Morning Greg;

Just got you e mail and I have some time before work so thought I'd get started with a response.  Thanks for explaining your position.  I can appreciate your desire to stop all the hatred and wars that go on in the world, and since you see religion as behind so much of it, I can understand why you would want to stop it.

I just realized one more thing before we go too far in.... As we are talking about belief systems and faith, and we have already both agreed that many of these issues cannot be "scientifically proven beyond a shadow of doubt", and since I already agree that some of the world's thinking, or atheistic thinking sounds reasonable on some level, and since it is you that says that faith in God and Jesus is complete foolishness, I feel that I need only provide sound, reasonable, and logical answers to your questions.  Do you agree that if I can truly give you that kind of answer, you will truly chew on it?

O.K. Responding to your e mail:

You said...."I would truly like to believe that when I die, my eternal soul will pass through the pearly gates of Heaven".......

With all my heart I pray that what your saying is indeed the truth... that you truly would like to believe.  If you are honest about that, I pray that you will soften your heart, truly contemplate on what is shared with you, not be so quick to dismiss, and truly challenge your own current logic and reasoning, as you are asking me to do.... I myself did not believe in Jesus Christ, nor the God of the Bible for most of my life.  Like you I studied all kinds of ways to dismiss them.  It was not until I was 32 years old (I'm only 40 now) that I truly came to believe in the Lord and accept Him into my heart.  When I personally took the challenge to examine ALL the evidence and reasoning, I concluded that it was most reasonable to believe rather that not believe... I pray this may happen to you as well.

You said.... "About that long list of noted scientists who believe in a God....I just keep wondering if any of them actually read all of the silly things that are in the Christian Bible and thought about them much, and could it be that they were afraid to admit their skepticism publicly?".....

Rather than wondering, if your serious, go to the library and look up their autobiographies.  You will find, as I did that they were extremely well versed in the Bible and men of great faith.  As far as the modern men I mentioned, USE LOGIC AND REASON:  most of the scientific community to which these men belong to are like yourself, atheistic, correct?  Why then would they profess their faith so loudly (if your familiar with any of their public work), only to be discredited by their peers?  Using your logic, it should be the other way around - publicly deny God and be respected by their peers and believe in God secretly.  Yet, in the face of their peers "scientific skepticism" they hold quite firm to the Faith and in fact provide the scientific community quite a bit of sound data for their faith.  Perhaps you may be interested in reading some of their articles?  When you made the above statement, were you truly using logic and reason?  Or were you merely posing a way to dismiss these men with no sound reason behind other than to maintain your current view?

You said.... "I have no reason to believe that the Jesus Christ of the Christian Bible ever actually lived. Chances are he is a character in a work of fiction".....However, it seems to me that if a man was indeed crucified and then came back to life, or walked on water, or turned bread into fish and water into wine, or raised the dead, or healed the sick, etc.., there would have been some mention of this in many writings of that time."

I'm sure your aware that there are actually only very few surviving ancient manuscripts from the 1st century even in existence today. But did you know that there are several ancient manuscripts written by various "non Christian" ancient authors that make reference to Jesus as a real and factual person?

So what was written on your web page about no other writings referring to the existence of Jesus is mistaken.  It is actually quite significant that there still exists this many different documents referring to Jesus, given that he was in ministry a short 3 years, living in a totally insignificant area known as Palestine, dying the death of a lowly criminal and most people rejecting him as the Messiah anyways.  I find it interesting that many ancient characters that the world fully accepts the reality of (and rightly so) is based on far less actual evidence than Jesus.  I could go into some detail of what each author wrote specifically about if you would like, however, does this give you an adequate collaborative evidence that, at the very least the Jesus in the New Testament did indeed exist?

Also, again using sound REASON & LOGIC:  Is it reasonable and logical to believe that a group of people simply made up a fictitious figure, naming him Jesus, made all these outlandish claims about him (claims that everyone in town could easily checkout and quickly disclaim them to be completely false), and rapidly develop a following within that same town (Jerusalem) to believe in this mythical figure and then promptly and brutally be tortured and killed for believing in the fictious figure that they knew to begin with they made up themselves?  That's reasonable??

You asked.... "How, Derek, do you interpret or explain this statement, especially the part I have underlined.  What does it mean to you?

I interpret that passage to mean just what it says, however hard it is to believe.  If what your really interested in is how do I explain that we do not seem to see too many believers today able to do such things, my explanation is.... We as a whole Body, are very weak believers.  Faith is a Gift from God, the Bible says.  I believe that believers all have varying degrees of faith and therefore, varying degrees of abilities and gifts.  Over the last 2,000 years while we wait for our Lord's return and continue to be bombarded by the world, we have grown weaker and weaker.  In my time as a believer I have heard of and have seen many believers with very strong faith, demonstrating some mighty impressive acts (though never drinking poison).  Does this help?  Does my explanation sound reasonable?

So, in respect to "did the Jesus spoken of in the New Testament really exist?", have I given you sound, reasonable, and logical evidences to say he did indeed?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on my answers and your answers to my questions.

Derek