Don and "runner".
It is quite wrong to say, as runner does
" the vast majority of thinking people who reject Christ don't want to live in what they see as the moral restraints that God requires. "

It is the search for meaning and for rail lines to run along that has created "God". Man created God for that reason.

The creation of God and faith and all non- evidence based faith and ideologies, ( e.g. Communism and Fascism) have given rise to huge injustice and premature death-Holocaust, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao purges, Protestant and Catholic killings, Muslim and Christian killings and Jewish suffering and killings..

We can only have universal progress when we have rejection of ideologies and religion and substitute the goal of progress of the human race as our guide.

The best understanding of these important questions I have read is Lloyd Geering's "Tomorrow's God" first published in NZ in 1994. A theologian by training and atheist by reasoning, Geering was Professor of Old Testament Studies at Knox College Dunedin and Foundation Professor of Religious Studies at Wellington University

"I waited for God, or Jesus, to speak to me. No message has ever come to me from on high."

What makes you think that you are important enough to be spoken to?

'The creation of God and faith and all non- evidence based faith and ideologies, '

the totally irrational, unscientific theory of evolution fits this faith description old man. Open your eyes to the obvious and you will see that greed, lust, pride, arrogance has led to killings including the millions of unborn babies. Yep you and me are part of the problem. Thankfully God provided a solution.

'Universal solution' will never occur while man is largely in denial of truth. Our universities and academia are evidence of this. One would need to be very foolish to believe that man has the answers to its problem. Academia creates as many problems as it solves. Your rebellion and denials add to the worlds problems as much as anyone else.

Hang on there, Pete. Pell hasn't been convicted of anything; and he might never be convicted of anything. He is in limbo because over-zealous police charged in without sufficient investigation. That's on the record.

Thank you, Don, for a thoughtful essay and candid expression of your personal experiences in religious development.

However, I am puzzled why a youthful interest in girls precluded living a good moral life. That sounds like mistaken preaching by your pastors, or unlucky misunderstanding on your part. It perpetuates the myth that woman is a temptress.

You confess to being more agnostic than anything else. There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with being agnostic or theist or atheist, so long as one is genuinely so and lives life accordingly. All three, in their psychological and epistemological essence, affirm the existential reality of belief, or, in scientific terms, the necessity to doubt. Without doubt, we cannot have science. Without doubt, we cannot have religion. In a very real sense, there is no moral virtue in being unquestionably certain.

Neither the theist nor the atheist can ever be certain of their belief or disbelief in God. To claim certainty is to delude oneself, either way. The best attitude at all times is to ask oneself why there is something rather than nothing. Neither science nor religion can answer that most basic question.

Don, I am concerned about your declaration that you are still waiting for some signal or reply from high above. Even if you are uncertain about God's existence, it is best not to tempt him or her. Moreover, given science tells us that the cosmos will survive for several more billion years, you are going to have to live for a very, very long time before you can receive God's reply to your demand.

Finally, Don, thank you for your speech in Armidale in 1981 championing the value of the humanities and the arts. For me at least, it has remained a good corrective to the recent and current over-excessive insistence on doing STEM, useful as they all are.

I identify with runner's comments, particularly-

"Genuine Christian faith all boils down to whether you accept Jesus Christ as being the Son of God, the sacrifice for our sins, our Coming Judge and of course His resurrection."

I also endorse the following statement by Peter Hitchens-

At the "The Festival of Dangerous Ideas," Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) suggested that the most dangerous idea in the world was that,
"Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead."
When asked why Jesus' resurrection was dangerous, (59th Minute) Hitchens said this:
"Because it alters the whole of human behavior and all our responsibilities. It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and, therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject it, it alters us all as well. It is incredibly dangerous. It's why so many people turn against it."

I find it challenging that the Apostle Paul took a whole chapter (1Corinthians 15) to highlight the resurrection of Christ and its implications for Christians looking for his coming again at the end of the age.

1Co 15:12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
1Co 15:13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
1Co 15:14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
1Co 15:15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
(English Standard Version)