A quote today on 'Facebook' from a family member in Aotearoa;

The Christians came to our land with their bibles, they said "Let us close our eyes and pray!" When we opened them, we had their bibles, but they had our land!

//As far as I'm aware, no other crititic in this conversation has, because no one else has said they tried it and it didn't work. (Or that they tried it and it did).//

I'm pretty sure that AJ Philips has mentioned that he used to be a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventist denomination of Christianity, and that it didn't work for him either.

//For my knowledge base I wish I had known this earlier instead of struggling in this conversation just to get my point across.//

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned I'm an ex-Catholic before. I might be wrong, though. Memory is a funny thing.

But up until you suggested it, I'd never considered a case study involving a friend. And as soon as you did, a little light bulb went off in my brain and I remembered that at around the age of 22-23 years age, my mate Alan decided to become Christian. And I can't honestly say that it made any difference at all in his personality. I went to high school with him and shared a house with him & another mate for a few years afterwards. He was always a good bloke, and becoming Christian didn't change that. Who knows, maybe he did find it easier to be the same man he always was with Jesus on his side. I can't read minds.

//You said earlier that you did find God. If you could say how you found Him. (Sorry I can't bring myself to calling God an "it").//

And I can't bring myself to call It a 'him', for where there is Nature, there also shall ye find God. And there was Nature long before sexual reproduction was a thing.

But I'm getting ahead of myself... it wasn't so much that I 'found' Him, it's that just I was assured of His existence by trusted and respected authority figures like my parents and my Scout leaders. Mum and Dad knew He existed, and that was good enough for me. For a time.

At some point - during what I believe would be the 'middle school' years in America - I became atheist. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why. Being a fan of Classic mythology and questioning why we just see them as stories but the ancients saw them as truth? Reading too many stories by [redacted] and [redacted]? (Sorry about the redactions, but from what I hear some Christians in the US are very keen on book-burning. Or is it that book-banning? Either way they're both evil, and it would pain me to see these brilliant authors being put on some hit list like J.K. Rowling.) A lack of available evidence to distinguish between the competing hypotheses about God's existence? Good old fashioned teenage rebellion? I don't know. Time for a brief musical interlude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGl1ItUFPaU

HEAD LIKE A HOLE! BLACK AS YOUR... ahem, do excuse me. Where were we?

Ah yes... not so rebellious any more, but still quite atheist. And then, one day, a chance discovery in a bookshop. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but this one intrigued me. It was called 'The Tao of Pooh', and the cover illustration was the one of the original illustrations by E.H. Shepherd. I've always been a big fan of A.A. Milne.

It was a good book. You should add it to your reading list. I'd never heard of Taoism before I read the book, and the author did a really good job of explaining some of the basic concepts of Taoism, with helpful and relatable examples from the Pooh stories to illustrate his points. I can't say it changed my life; I suspect I was a bit put off by the author's message when he started ragging on Eeyore, who is clearly the wisest of all the animals in Hundred Acre Wood. Anyway... it gave me a lot to think about.

So then I bumbled a long quite happily, not believing in God, and sort of half-heartedly believing in the Tao (I was never a very good Taoist, but I still think I gained wisdom from learning about it) until I came across another book by a Dutch Jewsish philsopher named Spinoza. You may have heard him referred to before. His ideas about God made a lot of sense to me. They still do. You should probably add him to your reading list as well.

And that was pretty much that for me… I did try a bit of Buddhism for a while, but mostly just to learn about meditation. TLDR: my journey towards God has been a somewhat meandering one. But I think the journey is often more important than the destination.

//A lack of knowledge on this does not say one way or another. But lacking knowledge does not mean we should lack hope. I think the prospect of other life is what fuels scientists to keep looking. Find out we are not alone.that our war torn world is not all there is in the glory and amazement in the heavens of stars and galaxies.//

Well said, NNS. I feel most in touch with God when I am gazing up at the stars...

Now young man, I believe you've got some homework to do. I've already given you a few readings, and I'm about to give you some more. Because everybody needs some decent fiction to balance out too much non-fiction. So here is you revised reading list:

1. 'Small Gods' by Terry Pratchett
2. 'God is Not Great' by Christopher Hitchens
3. 'The Tao of Pooh' by Benjamin Hoff
4. 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman
5. 'Good Omens' by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
6. 'Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order' by Benedict de Spinoza.

Right, that should keep you busy.

Well either your family member is the oldest person on the planet or they were just retelling a fairy tale told to them by someone retelling a fairy told to them by someone retelling a fairy told to them by someone.....

Matthew 10:37 (KJV) He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

That is sick. Jesus wants a man to love him more than his father, mother, son or daughter. It is Jesus who is not worthy - not someone who loves family more than a demanding religious figure.

In the Bible God is sometimes nasty, and Jesus is sometimes unreasonable. A man or woman should love family more than Jesus.
A good person would strive to keep families together rather than break them up. In Matthew 10:37 Jesus comes across as an attention demanding psychopath.