The disclaimer first: I am not a Christian. I usually try not to go in for the Christian-bashing of the militant atheists though - I'm not one of them either.

I do have to wonder, though, whether most churches and most churchgoers have really progressed much beyond the sort of medieval thinking Mr (Father? I do not know the polite form of address) Sellick describes. I was exposed to the usual Christian socialisation which was part of the life of most Australian kids growing up before (say) the mid 1980s. And right through that, I was taught that the miracles of the bible HAD actually happened and WERE to be taken literally. I was taught that both heaven and hell were real, even if not necessarily corporeal. I was taught that Jesus really did rise from the dead (in fact, I was told that fact was more important than chocolate eggs!). I was taught that Mary really was a virgin, that Lazarus really did wake up, that Jesus really walked on water, that the water was turned into wine, that there was enough bread and fish to feed 5000, that Noah packed all of biodiversity into an ark, that Moses parted the Red Sea and that Saul/Paul got zapped by faith on the road to Damascus. Reading George Pell's Sunday Tele columns, he clearly takes those bible stories for literal truth.

When I protested the unlikelihood of these events I was told that "that's what makes them miracles, that's what makes them special, and that's why one believes". Can you wonder that I do not follow that faith?

If, as i suggest, that is how Christiantiy has been presented, then its opponents are entitled to rebutt it on that basis. Mr Sellick's paper appears to be an attempt to shift the philosophical goalposts, because (to mix metaphors) they currently stand on shaky ground.

Talk about Straw Men! Why should those who regard the stories of miracles believed in by ignorant yokels (or the best informed people of their age for that matter) as absurd be thought to rely on that incredulity to make them doubt Christianity when there there are a thousand reasons for believing all religions to be merely manmade cultural artefacts of more or less social or personal utility for various purposes. Why would a supposedly loving god that cares for what he is presumed to have created allow his loved creatures to be deluded by so many variant messages from people claiming special knowledge of the god's nature, intentions and desires? Why would the Christian god who had allowed a rather broader view of the human family than the early desert tribesmen had entertained ignore the Buddhists and Hindus to name only the most numerous of the forgotten multitude? And so on, and on. Whether there was something that could be said to precede the Big Bang, whether there are/were many Big Bangs, when exactly evolution that led to our species started, and how, will no doubt remain a puzzle, possibly until the fireball which ends all life on earth (possibly only microbial by then)but that doesn't give Christianity or any other religion a leg up.

Have never really understood why Christians had to ruin a perfectly good story about a remarkable man by dressing him up as a God.

The essence of his message wasn't "Hey everyone look at me, I'm the son of God!" No, it was an entirely mortal message about a better way for people to relate to one another.

There the story should have ended.

If your god is not the god of the bible, then where is he. Does he/she/it actually DO anything?

Yawn, how boring. Written using the same dismally reductionist language that Dawkins uses--no light or lightness or even the possibility of lightness whatsoever-- or put in another way any kind of understanding of the "world" as Conscious Light, or quite literally a light show.
See for instance 1. http://www.dabase.org/dht6.htm

Not one word of inspiration or spiritually informed intelligence. Also completing lacking in any kind of esoteric understanding of the Process that is True Relgion.

The Proces that is True Religion has nothing whatsoever to do with any so called "historical" event---when and "where" did this "historical" event occur? It is always a present time moment to moment enquiry into what we are as conscious beings, and what is the nature of all of THIS arising---Consciousness and Energy---the two fundamental irreducible facts of existence.

This reference gives a unique profoundly esoteric understanding of Jesus and the Teaching of Truth To & About Man

2. http://beezone.com/AdiDa/EWB/EWB_pp436-459.html#jesusandtheteaching

This reference 3.http://www.dabase.org/proffch6.htm gives a comprehensive critique of Christianity as an entirely power seeking worldly institution in which any kind of esoteric understanding is more or less taboo---made into a heresy even (most if not all of the Illuminated Saints within western Christianity were heavily persecuted by the ecclesiastical "authorities"). It is the esoteric dimensions of True Religion that make it culturally superior to the ordinary reductionist street level "world"-view of the scientist and the exoteric religionist such as Sells.

Many scientist see a lot more science in creation than the myth of evolution. The writers of the Scriptures agree that if Christ has not been raised from the dead then the Christian faith is useless. It is a good thing that many if not most of the great true scientist throughout history were believers in the gospel. If not the world would be a lot darker place than it is now.