Previous Correspondence with Mike Magee

Paul commented on Mike Magee's website:

Mike, I was looking something up and ran across your website. Please have a look at ours:

www.thepathoftruth.com

www.harvesthaven.com

Mike's reply:

Dear Paul:

I took a look at your two websites as you suggested, and they are certainly beautifully produced, and the Harvest Haven one gives a wonderful feeling of freshness. What I cannot understand is all that God and religion stuff that you think you need to make it work. Obviously it is some sort of psychological motivation for you, but all I can point out is that you are actually serving the earth, the world and its inhabitants with your philosophy, or religion. If you are serving God, then God is Nature. Your beliefs and actions in the world are all the more directly important, once you realize and accept it. Then you will be Adelphiasophists. Perhaps you are already!

Best wishes,
Mike

Paul's reply:

Hi Mike,

Thank you for looking at our sites and your feedback. You are wrong, however, that we feel the need for God to make it work. You have it altogether backwards. God is responsible for it all and has put it together and made it work; of that there is no doubt. Read Our Testimonies, for example. We did not make these things happen to us, and it is undoubtedly impossible that we could. Neither are we putting our interpretation onto events because the Lord has spoken to us and told us beforehand what He would do, and He did it.

How do you argue with that? Hysteria or delusion? Hardly. What we have and the manner in which we live does not agree with your analysis. I am speaking of facts, not opinions. You really do not know what you are talking about.

Perhaps all you have met in your life is religious people, who have a form of godliness, but not God. That is the vast majority of “Christendom,” and other religious. Read our site and get familiar with the difference.

There are only two kinds of Christians. There are those who are self or man made. They follow doctrines, creeds, other people, and sometimes none of the above; they just use the Name in a casual and meaningless manner. Then there are those Christians who are so because God has made a supernatural change in their lives, and, becoming new creatures by and through Him, they speak of Him from a firsthand knowledge. They know Jesus Christ and manifest His mind, works, and will. They are in Him, and function as part of His mystical Body. We are of these latter, also known as the children of God.

According to your site, Adelphiasophists say:

“Christians say they know there is a God, but this knowledge is without any evidence. It is revealed, which means you take it or leave it, on trust. Christians have taken it, or been taken in by it.”

You are speaking of false Christians, because we, true Christians, believe not by “blind faith,” but because we have met and heard the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ. God has drawn us to Himself, and we had no choice in His choosing. It was His doing, not ours. And we certainly do have evidence, plenty of it. In fact, some of it we have in common with you, only you have drawn the wrong conclusions from it, not having the faith in Christ:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God has shown it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things made, both His eternal power and Divinity, so that they are without excuse. Because, having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for a likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and reptiles. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of the own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 1:18-25 EMTV).

For some, this worship of the creature is concealed under a guise of worship of the Creator, but in your case, you flatly confess it:

“Adelphiasophism refuses to cast aside the source of this wonder, Nature, and instead sees Nature as the source of the divine.” Adelphiasophism is reverence of the cosmos and Nature as sacred.”

As I said, you have things backwards, Mike. I will add this thought, too. We are at harmony with nature as no Adelphiasophists could ever be, because we are at harmony with the Creator of nature, Jesus Christ. You must necessarily betray your principles, and do, whether you know it or not. You offend nature just by your stance. How can you not when your very nature is at enmity with the Creator of nature? How can you properly respect the property if you do not respect and pay heed to the property Owner? Nature worship does not translate into noble and just deeds. Rather, it is the opposite:

“For this reason God gave them up to passions of dishonor; for even their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature, and likewise also the males, having left the natural use of the female, were inflamed by their lust for one another, males with males, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error. And just as they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do the things which are not fitting; having been filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, greed, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness; they are whisperers, slanderers, hateful to God, insolent men, proud, braggarts, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, having known the righteous judgment of God, that those practicing such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:26-32 EMTV).

Doesn't sound very peaceable to me.

Paul

Mike's reply (in black) within Paul's letter (in blue):

Dear Paul,
Happy New Year

Paul: Hi Mike,

Thank you. I have noticed over the years that Christians are always right, and always arrogant about it, but my own, reading of the gospels, flawed as they no doubt are, but as good as yours, tell me that Christ expected Christians to be humble. I have rarely uncounted a humble one, especially from the American continent. As for your testimonies", as far as I read, which was not far because they were terribly tedious, they are quite as valueless as all the other essentially identical ones that I have read. You begin by believing because that is the way you were brought up, go through periods of doubt and angst and end up converted. Did you ever consider the psychology of it? Religious experience is all explained quite well by psychology, but religious indoctrination from an early age is hard to overcome, as Mr Hafichuk will confirm as a Catholic vecause Ignatius Loyola was the man who mastered the technique.

Paul: Perhaps all you have met in your life is religious people, who have a form of godliness, but not God. That is the vast majority of “Christendom,” and other religious. Read our site and get familiar with the difference.

Well, every Christian believer has the same idea. They all of them, every one, know God no one else does. You were the one who mentioned delusion just now. That is what it is.

Paul: There are only two kinds of Christians. There are those who are self or man made. They follow doctrines, creeds, other people, and sometimes none of the above; they just use the Name in a casual and meaningless manner. Then there are those Christians who are so because God has made a supernatural change in their lives, and, becoming new creatures by and through Him, they speak of Him from a firsthand knowledge. They know Jesus Christ and manifest His mind, works, and will. They are in Him, and function as part of His mystical Body. We are of these latter, also known as the children of God.

That is just what I mean. You are convinced from a few psychological effects on a prepared mind that God is talking especially to you. Others think He is talking especially to them. Sooner or later they argue about who He is really talking to, and we get another war. It seems to a lot of us who do not share your delusions that Christianity is Satanic. How can you demonstrate conclusively to me that it is not? that your impression of receiving God is not really receiving Satan, a being described as the most subtle of God's creation. In other words he is cleverer than you are and cleverer than you think.

Paul: According to your site, Adelphiasophists say:

For some, this worship of the creature is concealed under a guise of worship of the Creator, but in your case, you flatly confess it:

“Adelphiasophism refuses to cast aside the source of this wonder, Nature, and instead sees Nature as the source of the divine. Adelphiasophism is reverence of the cosmos and Nature as sacred.”

I am indeed talking of false Christians. Christianity is false, and we have 2000 years of history to prove it. "True" Christianity is the most false, the least humble, the most arrogant, and the least salvific. Read what God has to say about it in your bible. Moreover, the citation from Paul that you give can better be read as confirming that it is Christians so-called who are the liars he speaks of. God has indeed shown it to them, and the invisible is clearly seen in Nature, the true God, and the one who has for 2000 years not been glorified because Christians have invented an imaginary God who is really Satan to replace Him. They reasoned wrongly about this false God, darkened their hearts, professed to be wise but were fools, and made God in an animal form in their heads. To Christians, you included, God is a big man with a man's thoughts, and his mini-gods have bird's wings and bat's wings to flit around fooling or scaring people, respectively. This imaginary God is obviously not a God because all Christians claim to understand Him and be His chum. Either they are mental or God is an idiot. You therefore have it all backwards and have done for all these centuries, yet you will not consider history, and evil, and whether Christians with convictions like yours are not actually contributing to it, if not causing it.

Paul: You offend nature just by your stance. How can you not when your very nature is at enmity with the Creator of nature? How can you properly respect the property if you do not respect and pay heed to the property Owner? Nature worship does not translate into noble and just deeds. Rather, it is the opposite:

Doesn’t sound very peaceable to me.

Quite so. Paul was the man who distorted Christianity from the teachings of Christ, and I am led to believe that for Christians Christ is the God, not Paul. Christians have made Paul into God, and therein lies their initial mistake. God can hardly deny anything that is natural since He was the Creator, Christians tell us. How then can fornication be wrong, how can lust be wrong? It is lust that makes people want to fornicate, and fornication leads to procreation! What is wrong is failing to look after the children produced by the fornication, yet Christians faiths like Catholicism still urge people to have children they cannot provide for, and not to use contraceptive methods that can help the world to be less overcrowded and ensure that all children are wanted ones. Paul had some problem. He admits to having a thorn in his side, surely a sexual problem as his weird views about a perfectly natural function show. In this clip, he blames every crime on to fornication. Do you believe that God gave up people to Satan? If he did then God is Satan, is He not? The catalogue Paul gives is a catalogue of Christian wickedness. I use God in much of this discussion to please you because God is a demiurgos, an artificer, but Nature is a Goddess, a mother, She gives birth. It is wrong when our basic nature as social animals is neglected in favour of atavistic, selfish ones. Christianity is an attempt to get people to be properly social human beings, not greedy and selfish ones. That is what love is about, but we cannot fail to love all of what you say is God's creation. But it is to be loved in its own right, not bypassed for a figment of the human mind.

That is why you and all your fellow Christians, whether you like them or not, are wrong.

Turn again! Dick Whittington.

Well, it is the season for it!

Best wishes,

Mike

Paul's reply:

Mike,

You treat us as though all we have is mere opinion and misconceptions, born out of environmental and social conditioning and the like. Isn’t that where your opinion is coming from? Or are you claiming that you have transcended your environment, and if so, how have you been able to do that? What proof do you have that you are above these things? And can you provide an authoritative source, other than yourself, that verifies your thinking?

I have several profound advantages over you in my understanding. Firstly, I have been a heathen with a bit of an education, just like you, whereas you have never known Christ, the living God. You have no basis of comparison, as do I. Secondly, coming to Christ, I found out how little I knew, and learned to shut my mouth, open my ears, and learn something. You have never learned to do this. Your mind is so bigoted and closed against Truth, Christ and the Bible, that you do not even bother to read anything we have written to inform yourself of the facts. You just go ahead and give your pre-programmed, time-worn answers, assuming you know what you are talking about, while opening wide your mouth and pouring out such nonsense and foolishness that many can plainly see that you are clueless and willfully ignorant.

For example, you say that all those who profess Christ begin by believing, and then go through doubts. You also say you red the beginning of my testimony, in which I proclaim I was raised as a secular and agnostic Jew. Christ and faith had nothing to do with my household, or my peers and social environment. So what kind of credibility do you think to gain by making grand pronouncements that overlook prominent facts that very simply refute you? The life I have led is not a product of my environment, as is readily attested to by the fact that none of my family or peers lives such a life to this day, thirty years on.

You talk about psychology easily explaining all religious conversion (you do not distinguish between true and false). Another agnostic, secular Jewish friend of mine studying psychology at University, said to me, after I had begun to believe and follow Christ:

“Paul, according to the principles of applied human psychology, with what has happened in your life [some details in my testimony], you should be an absolute basket case.”

He made that statement to me because he observed that I obviously was not a basket case, and what was then has continued, only getting better, because the Lord is here to deliver us from sin-dementia into a sound mind. Five years ago my landlord, an atheist holistic doctor, with many years of experience, said I was the most well-adjusted person he knew. Now, I do not go by any man’s estimation of me, but since you do, there you have it from one of your authorities.

This I do know, and can proclaim is true by the grace of God in Christ Jesus: The path I am on has proven to be no fly-by-night fluke and is proof of the Higher Power and Authority of God, transcending the science of psychology that you cite as your authority.

You make absolute statements that are unprovable, which makes them inadmissible and useless. Take away such generalizations and there goes the entire structure on which you have built all your arguments and life’s work.

For example, you write: “I have noticed over the years that Christians are always right, and always arrogant about it....”

Obviously you are wrong, because we, as Christians, have admitted to being wrong about many things. That is how we became true Christians in the first place! We left behind our entire social structures and support systems as a testament of their wrongness and our wrongness in them. Furthermore, during our sojourn since turning to Christ we have been corrected on many things. Read enough on our site and you will find this to be well documented. Repentance and change is the vital essence and nature of the true walk of faith in Christ, a continual stripping away of lies and unreality as one progresses into greater light, with error and wrongness readily admitted.

Where have you ever admitted that you have been wrong? For example, let’s see if you will admit that you have been wrong in the false assumptions I am pinpointing in this letter. Fat chance! You will never admit to being wrong because you do not want to lose your life. Admitting you are wrong destroys the whole superstructure on which you justify your existence. You have no impartiality or love of Truth. You are only partial to yourself and what you believe, the very same thing of which you accuse others.

Go ahead, though, if you will, and prove me wrong. I will be the first to admit it, and will be very thankful to be corrected in this matter. It would be wonderful if you could admit to being wrong!

You go on: “...but my own, reading of the gospels, flawed as they no doubt are, but as good as yours, tell me that Christ expected Christians to be humble.”

If your understanding of the gospels is flawed, of what value are your conclusions about it? I will show how your estimation of your understanding is correct; it is indeed in error. If mine is flawed, it is up to you to prove it. You have done no such thing. You complain about false religious authorities who demand that others believe their rubbish, but you are no different. Who are you that your word is to be taken and believed as the truth, even after you tell us it is very likely not? Which Mike are we to believe, the one who admits he does not have perfect understanding or the one who behaves as a pope and expects his word to be believed, forget any proof, otherwise he becomes incensed?

The problem for you is that you do not understand what “humble” means, or, on the reverse side, “arrogant.” You say that Christ expected Christians to be humble. Firstly, you are mistaken because you speak of Christ in the past tense, as if He laid down a law and is no longer present. Secondly, you are mistaken because you speak of Christ as though He depended on the carnal man to be humble, who could not be so even if his life depended on it. Thirdly, you do not know or recognize that a Christian is one in whom Christ dwells, so it is His nature, and not man’s fallen and corrupt one, that prevails.

According to your definition of humility, Jesus Christ was the most arrogant of men, because He knew the Truth and spoke it with authority, not prefacing His statements with disclaimers about having a flawed understanding. He never once said, “In My opinion….” He always said, “Here is the way it is.” He quoted the Scriptures, which you deny, and taught from them as the sure, authoritative Word of God. How is it that you would appeal to what He said when you clearly dismiss Him as an egomaniac and deluded fool? How can you call His followers into account for being like Him, as though He would disapprove of this? Your reasoning is confounded.

It is not arrogance to believe, know, and speak the truth; that is humility. It is not humility to give dogmatic opinions about things you do not know; that is arrogance.

You write: “Well, every Christian believer has the same idea. They all of them, every one, know God but no one else does.”

Had you red enough of my testimony to know what you are talking about, you would have seen that I was a Christian when I met Victor, and I did not have the reaction you describe. By the grace of God, I listened to what he had to say and acknowledged that it was from God. There is agreement in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord through Victor had things to tell me that I did not want to believe, but had to believe because they were true and I knew it. You believe only what you want to believe, and that makes you a damned hypocrite for condemning others who do the same. You have never had to go through the death throes of receiving the Truth. That is your problem and shortfall. Death will cost you everything, and you fear that, rather than love the Truth. You resist the Truth and are found to be a liar.

If you are saying that only Christians know God, that is true (of true Christians), because Jesus Christ is God. When you know Christ you have come to know God. Jesus said, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father,” and “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one can come to the Father except through Me.”

You pose this question: “It seems to a lot of us who do not share your delusions that Christianity is Satanic. How can you demonstrate conclusively to me that it is not? that your impression of receiving God is not really receiving Satan, a being described as the most subtle of God's creation. In other words he is cleverer than you are and cleverer than you think.”

If it is delusional to believe that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh, Who laid down His life for the sins of the world and took it up again after three days in order to justify those who believe, how is it you believe in Satan, one of God’s creatures that you also cannot see? Does that not, by your reckoning, also make you delusional?

But I can tell you this: You are right, Satan is cleverer than you are, and has you right where he wants you. He is there for this very purpose, to rule over all the children of pride. We, being raised up in Christ to sit with Him on His throne, are under Satan no longer. We have peace and unity amongst ourselves, a sure sign to the world:

“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35 EMTV).

You do not have the love of God or the peace that comes by His love, a sure sign of whose rule you are under. Though the world is filled with false Christianity manifesting the same disunity as you do, that in no way negates the true. It only makes it shine all the brighter.

It really does not help your cause that you are so ill-informed in your opinions, Mike, and you can do no other.

You write: “...yet you will not consider history, and evil, and whether Christians with convictions like yours are not actually contributing to it, if not causing it.”

A great deal of the material on our site considers those very things, addressing the errors and false claims of popes and other religious imposters who have come in the Name of Christ and who have brought great bloodshed and suffering on humanity. Those are not Christians like us because they are not Christians, period, and we have proven it. They are counterfeit. You deny the counterfeit, and the Real. You cannot tell the difference. You are a broken thermometer, worse than useless, spilling toxins wherever you go. You are no less to blame for the problems of humanity than the religious you condemn, for, as I have shown, you also act like a pope, making proclamations in your ignorance and presenting them to the world as though they have been dispensed from the throne of God as gospel truth.

Here is a good example:

“Paul was the man who distorted Christianity from the teachings of Christ, and I am led to believe that for Christians Christ is the God, not Paul. Christians have made Paul into God, and therein lies their initial mistake.”

Spoken just like a pope. However, Paul did not distort the teachings of Christ. Show us where he has and we will show you where you are wrong. Give one or two examples from the Scriptures with specific quotes.

We do recognize the revelation Truth that Brother Paul was given in Christ to preach to the world, and together with him (and with all those who believe), we worship the One Paul presented as our Lord and Savior. Prove that we worship Paul, with specifics. You have plenty of material to work with on our site, so you have no excuse for not backing up your words with evidence.

On the subject of Paul, here is an example where you misinterpret his words:

“Paul had some problem. He admits to having a thorn in his side, surely a sexual problem as his weird views about a perfectly natural function show. In this clip, he blames every crime on to fornication.”

You assume wrongly that Paul had a sexual problem, based on your misreading of the “clip,” Romans 1:26-32, and not giving any consideration to the previous verses in the same chapter that were also quoted in my letter to you, in which Paul identifies man’s problem as suppression of the truth and thrusting God away for this cause. Paul goes on to list over twenty fruits and wrongful attitudes resulting from this abandonment of God, of which fornication is only one. The person who is obsessed with fornication and is having a sexual problem is not Paul, but you.

In identifying fornication as sin, Paul was not speaking ill of sexual intercourse any more than a judge sentencing a bank robber is speaking ill of money. You do not seem to really know what fornication is.

You write:

“God can hardly deny anything that is natural since He was the Creator, Christians tell us. How then can fornication be wrong, how can lust be wrong? It is lust that makes people want to fornicate, and fornication leads to procreation!”

I have to ask myself here if I am conversing with a moron. It would make the stupid things you say far more understandable, rather than if it were to turn out you are the highly intellectual person you present yourself to be. If you really are so smart in this world, it only proves the Word of God and vindicates His wisdom:

"The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless" (1 Corinthians 3:20 EMTV).

You will have come to the place where you acknowledge you know nothing, just as we have, before you will know anything of value.

Fornication is illicit and unlawful sexual relationships. That includes adultery, homosexuality, and sex outside of the God-ordained marriage relationship. These activities are wrong. Just because you have an urge to do something does not make that thing good or right. Are you telling me that you have never learned that, or to control your urges? Apparently you have not as you need to. You resist and deny Reality, but Reality does not go away.

You write:

“We would be much better people to be freed of guilt because doing what comes naturally cannot usually be wrong.”

Does this mean you disagree with the Ten Commandments? Carrying your foolish reasoning along, you might find nothing wrong with murder because you get so angry you could kill someone. Did you know that God gave the Law to us through Moses, the man of God? Are you of the same mind as Hitler, whose goal it was to rid the world of the people of Moses, those who brought us what he called a “guilty conscience”? Your thinking is very similar to his:

“The Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world: Circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul. I come to free mankind from their shackles... The Ten Commandments have lost their validity... Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision...” (Mein Kampf).

Heil Mike?

Again, had you red my testimony you would know that fornication is wrong and brings suffering to humanity. Now having been delivered of this sin, how grateful I am to know the difference between right and wrong. If only you knew the difference between right and wrong, you could open your eyes to the devastations caused by adultery, as just one example of the bitter fruits of following your lusts. You mentioned unwanted children. How about unwanted pregnancies and abortion? You think there is no price to pay for your sins? You are a fool.

“The fool has said in his heart, There is no God! They acted corruptly; they have done abominable works, there is none who does good" (Psalms 14:1 MKJV).

This is not referring to your nature god, but to the Creator and Omnipotent Ruler Who does all things, Who has spoken to us, as He has many others over the millennia. You worship the ear, but we worship the One Who made it and speaks to it, Whom you call a “figment of the human mind.” And you call us arrogant!

You pose a question as though you have us outwitted, so smart you are. You think to have it all figured out, even with your flawed understanding. We can answer your question, because our understanding is not flawed; we have the mind of Christ.

You ask:

“Do you believe that God gave up people to Satan? If he did then God is Satan, is He not?”

Satan is no more God than the state warden is Governor of the state. Tossing garbage into the fire does not make me the fire, though I have authority of the fire and the burning of the garbage. How foolish is your nonsense! Satan is a servant of God, as I have already said, given to rule over those like you, who are proud resistors of Truth, trusting in themselves rather than God. Satan has no autonomy but to do what his Lord created him for and sends him to do. Does this mean that God is over all evil? Yes, it does:

“That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside Me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:6-7 KJV).

We are here by His will, Mike, and He has given us this golden opportunity to shed His glorious Light on your darkness. He has done this without your permission, though you have earnestly asked for it. What could be more marvelous than that?

Paul

Mike's reply within Paul's reply (in blue):

Dear Paul

You wrote:

Paul: Mike,

Christians always demand that their critics offer proof when they just believe with no proof except the delusion they call faith. It is a key element in their confidence trick. I believe in the rational scientific philosophy that relieved us of a 1000 year Christian dark age.

Paul: I have several profound advantages over you in my understanding. Firstly, I have been a heathen with a bit of an education, just like you, whereas you have never known Christ, the living God. You have no basis of comparison, as do I.

You are arrogantly wrong. I too believed in Christ, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as a child, but I grew out of childish beliefs as I matured. Christians accept that they have to remain children because Christ spoke of them as children. Similarly, they like to be called sheep for the same reason, and fools because that is what Paul recommended for Christian believers.

Paul: Secondly, coming to Christ, I found out how little I knew, and learned to shut my mouth, open my ears, and learn something. You have never learned to do this. Your mind is so bigoted and closed against Truth, Christ and the Bible, that you do not even bother to read anything we have written to inform yourself of the facts. You just go ahead and give your pre-programmed, time-worn answers, assuming you know what you are talking about, while opening wide your mouth and pouring out such nonsense and foolishness that many can plainly see that you are clueless and willfully ignorant.

You seem a patient man to want to argue with clueless and wilfully ignorant people, but as that description is far more aptly applied to Christians than to their critics, it is quite understandable. Unlike the emortional approach you have, I have approached Christianity coolly and rationally. I have looked into it over a long period, taking everything into account, but using what modern scholarship has revealed to us, not merely psychological fancies and ancient documents that you would call mythical is they were not central to your own convictions. So, again you betray your own arrogance and intolerance in speaking the way you do of my "nonsense", "foolishness", "cluelessness" and "ignorance" when you spew it out in every sentence.

Paul: For example, you say that all those who profess Christ begin by believing, and then go through doubts. You also say you red the beginning of my testimony, in which I proclaim I was raised as a secular and agnostic Jew. Christ and faith had nothing to do with my household, or my peers and social environment. So what kind of credibility do you think to gain by making grand pronouncements that overlook prominent facts that very simply refute you? The life I have led is not a product of my environment, as is readily attested to by the fact that none of my family or peers lives such a life to this day, thirty years on.

Everybody's life is a product of their environment. There are several false statements about what I wrote, in this one paragraph, but I am well acquainted with the inability of Christians to argue with anything other than the straw men they like to set up to give the appearance to the ignorant sheep they want to convert that they are clever. I say nothing about your personal testimonies because I pointed out they were too tedious to read. I spoke about the "essentially identical ones" I HAVE read, and they are the ones whose characteristics I outline. You want to brag that your are different, well fine, but even if it is true, the outcome sounds to be the same bigoted, intolerant, know-nothings that born again Christians particularly show themselves to be. I repeat that those who are not brought up as "believers" rarely convert. They already believed. Mostly, it is parental, but occasionally, the influence can be elsewhere. The psychology of it is well explored.

Paul: You talk about psychology easily explaining all religious conversion (you do not distinguish between true and false). Another agnostic secular Jewish friend of mine studying psychology at University said to me, after I had begun to believe and follow Christ:

“Paul, according to the principles of applied human psychology, with what has happened in your life [some details in my testimony], you should be an absolute basket case.”

He made that statement to me because he observed that I obviously was not a basket case, and what was then has continued, only getting better because the Lord is here to deliver us from sin-dementia into a sound mind. Five years ago my landlord, an atheist holistic doctor with many years of experience, said I was the most well-adjusted person he knew. Now, I do not go by any man’s estimation of me, but since you do, there you have it from one of your authorities.

You sound as if you are rather desperately trying to convince yourself and offer these testimonies in evidence. It does not stop you from sounding like a "basket case" in this correspondence. You remind me of the story of the official visiting a mental hospital and chatting amicably for twenty minutes to a man he took to be a doctor, until he asked whether he would help him escape from Elba. I have no idea what the puprose of the word "sin" is before your use of the word "dementia" but your impression of a sound mind sounds quite like it. To spell it out, some people can seem to be sane when they are mad. In my opinion, anyone aho believes in invisible buddies are insane, but they can seem as sane as anyone else when they keep it to themselves.

Paul: This I do know and can proclaim is true by the grace of God in Christ Jesus: The path I am on has proven to be no fly-by-night fluke and is proof of the Higher Power and Authority of God, transcending the science of psychology that you cite as your authority.

Isn't that what they all say?

Paul: You make absolute statements that are unprovable, which makes them inadmissible and useless. Take away such generalizations and there goes the entire structure on which you have built all your arguments and life’s work.

For example, you write: “I have noticed over the years that Christians are always right, and always arrogant about it....”

The whole of Christian belief is absolute and unprovable, yet you have the dishonesty to criticize me for allegedly making such statements. That is typical of you Christians. It is like your perpetual demand for proof when you have none for your own fancies, and your incessant demand for authorities when you will ignore verifiable proofs for the "authority" of an ancient and often demonstrably wrong book. As I said already, your God has to be an idiot, or you have to be idiots to believe in him. It is obviously wrong to me, and anyone modern. Believing in a rabbit's foot to bring you good luck is a false belief, and believing in an invisible buddy to make you good or bring you some unnecessary salvation is no different, arguably worse because you are believing in nothing. That is why belief in God is such a good scam.

Paul: Where have you ever admitted that you have been wrong? For example, let’s see if you will admit that you have been wrong in the false assumptions I am pinpointing in this letter. Fat chance! You will never admit to being wrong because you do not want to lose your life. Admitting you are wrong destroys the whole superstructure on which you justify your existence. You have no impartiality or love of Truth. You are only partial to yourself and what you believe, the very same thing of which you accuse others.

Right again. You have misconstrued what I wrote, even though it is there in black and white, and then want me to rescind what I said. If I have been less than precise, then I willingly do rescind it, and will try, as I am doing, to say it more clearly. As for serious admissions of being wrong, I have admitted it here for you. I do not believe in Santa Clause, though I once did. I was wrong. I cannot see how this will make me "lose my life". The Christian scam is that you must believe a figure exactly as realistic as Santa Claus to live forever. Well, think about it for a moment. Living forever would leave you in a celestial asylum, if you are not already writing from one. If God has lived forever, then it is hardly surprising that he has gone doolally an eternity ago, and was responsible for all the wickedness of the Jewish scriptures that Christians purloined as their own and called the Old Testament. Eternity is a considerably long time to amuse yourself.

Paul: Go ahead, though, if you will, and prove me wrong. I will be the first to admit it, and will be very thankful to be corrected in this matter. It would be wonderful if you could admit to being wrong!

You go on: “...but my own, reading of the gospels, flawed as they no doubt are, but as good as yours, tell me that Christ expected Christians to be humble.”

The one who sounds incensed is you, and you are the one who expects to be believed precisely because there is no proof of imaginary beings. Your gospel argument is called sophistry. I pointed out that my reading of the gospels is quite as good as yours even if it is flawed. You have no better claim to have read them correctly than I have. I can read words, and the words are plain enough. You often will not accept them, because they are too plain, and the plain reading makes you and those like you anything but Christians.

Paul: The problem for you is that you do not understand what “humble” means, or, on the reverse side, “arrogant.” You say that Christ expected Christians to be humble. Firstly, you are mistaken because you speak of Christ in the past tense, as if He laid down a law and is no longer present. Secondly, you are mistaken because you speak of Christ as though He depended on the carnal man to be humble, who could not be so even if his life depended on it. Thirdly, you do not know or recognize that a Christian is one in whom Christ dwells, so it is His nature, and not man’s fallen and corrupt one, that prevails.

Definitions are easily looked up in a dictionary, and inasmuch as God used words to tell His followers how to behave, I can understand God as well as you can. Perhaps, indeed, better, because I take words to mean what they say and you take them to say what you want them to mean. "The first will be last and the last first" was what Christ meant by being humble. You think you are first! Christ no doubt lives in your head, but the author of the words we are discussing died 2000 years ago. If men cannot be humble then why would God expect them to be humble. Is God asking what is impossible? You are defining for yourself what the incarnate God of the bible tells you to do. It is too hard for you so you ignore it. Nevertheless, it is what your God, not Paul, told you to do. You have failed. Lastly, if it is Christ's nature to be humble, then you ought to be, if indeed Christ dwells in you. You still fail. Too bad. Maybe you should stop preaching your own idiosyncratic line, and begin practising what God preached. It sounds a better way to be saved to me, but you will know better.

Paul: According to your definition of humility, Jesus Christ was the most arrogant of men, because He knew the Truth and spoke it with authority, not prefacing His statements with disclaimers about having a flawed understanding. He never once said, “In My opinion….” He always said, “Here is the way it is.” He quoted the Scriptures, which you deny, and taught from them as the sure, authoritative Word of God. How is it that you would appeal to what He said when you clearly dismiss Him as an egomaniac and deluded fool? How can you call His followers into account for being like Him, as though He would disapprove of this? Your reasoning is confounded.

Well this same man you call Christ, God and the Son of God, denied as plainly as possible that he was God, but you still say he is. He denied fairly plainly that he was the son of David but you cannot understand that, and go around saying he was (or is). You say that Christ spoke the Truth, but the only evidence you have that anything he said is true is the bible. Is the bible your God? Is the bible inerrant? Can anything in this imperfect world be perfect? You believe the bible is true and so you believe in Christ and God and therefore you believe the bible. Clever, eh?

Should it be necessary to show that Christ did not speak the Truth, he believed the scriptures were absolutely true, so anything in them that is not true therefore proves Christ false. That is why you have to believe they are inerrant. More and more of the bible is being exposed as false, but you will not accept it. You cannot. Your beliefs depend on it. You would rather believe an ancient and flawed book to the world around you. That is why Christian gambling and second hand car millionnaires spend their small change supporting creationists against science.

Paul: It is not arrogance to believe, know, and speak the truth; that is humility. It is not humility to give dogmatic opinions about things you do not know; that is arrogance.

I accept as true what is verified not what some ancient prince priest, or prophet allegedly wrote when people believed illness was caused by demons and good fortune by angels. All that false believe in angels and demons left us bereft of proper investigation into Nature for over a millennium and when peiople suffered misery despite their prayers. You are arrogant to propound failed nostrums. I accept what anyone intelligent today accepts -- biology, mathematics, physics, medicine, and so on. You stick to mythology, if you like but keep it to yourself.

Paul: You write: “Well, every Christian believer has the same idea. They all of them, every one, know God but no one else does.”

Had you red enough of my testimony to know what you are talking about, you would have seen that I was a Christian when I met Victor, and I did not have the reaction you describe. By the grace of God I listened to what he had to say and acknowledged that it was from God. There is agreement in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord through Victor had things to tell me that I did not want to believe, but had to believe because they were true and I knew it. You believe only what you want to believe, and that makes you a damned hypocrite for condemning others who do the same. You have never had to go through the death throes of receiving the Truth. That is your problem and shortfall. Death will cost you everything, and you fear that rather than love the Truth. You resist the Truth and are found to be a liar.

This Truth that you speak of with the initial capital letter is the Christian word for lies. Truth is verifiable, and any good God could not advocate lying as the truth, let alone the Truth. Goodness cannot involve lies, so the religion of lies cannot be God's. The ordinary man believes what is shown to work, reliably, repeatedly. It is what makes aeroplanes fly. No Christian since Peter (allegedly) flew on faith alone, and sensibly no Christians today attempt it. Christian truth is no different from faith in a charm bracelet. It might have some marginal benefits. We call it the placebo effect, anbd Christian belief might have that. It is what I have said above, it is psychology, but you try to make it into magic or mysticism. I imagine I shall not have many years left to go, but I do not fear death, and I doubt that many people do when they come to it. It is, after all, natural. Eternal life is unnatural. People should fear that, and, if you have it wrong, and Satan is the God you are worshipping, hell is what you are praying for. Eternal life must be hell. The antidote to it is death!

Paul: If you are saying that only Christians know God, that is true (of true Christians), because Jesus Christ is God. When you know Christ you have come to know God. Jesus said, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father,” and “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one can come to the Father except through Me.”

You pose this question: "It seems to a lot of us who do not share your delusions that Christianity is Satanic. How can you demonstrate conclusively to me that it is not? that your impression of receiving God is not really receiving Satan, a being described as the most subtle of God's creation. In other words he is cleverer than you are and cleverer than you think.”

Did I say I believed in Satan? I am asking you to justify your own certain knowledge that Satan has not tricked you. You are the one who believes in Satan, remember?

Some Christians believed the crucifixion was a Satanic trick, but you are certain it was not. Is it false that Satan can appear as an angel of light? You are not humble enough to understand what I am talking about, and you do not care because you think God is an idiot. And, no, that does not mean I believe in God, it means that you believe in God the Idiot, because God is supposed to be almighty but he is not mighty enough to realize that you are not doing what he came down to earth to tell you. He said "blessed are the meek", not "Blessed are arrogant twits who think they know more than I do". The arrogant Paul is your God.

Paul: But I can tell you this: You are right, Satan is cleverer than you are, and has you right where he wants you. He is there for this very purpose, to rule over all the children of pride. We, being raised up in Christ to sit with Him on His throne, are under Satan no longer. We have peace and unity amongst ourselves, a sure sign to the world:

“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35 EMTV).

You are utterly incapable of self-criticism. It is another Christian fault, yet you call others proud. You have the sin of pride because you are sure you are "saved". Sorry chum. It is not that easy. Read your bible. And who is it that you are raised up in to make your so proud? Are you sure that Christ of yours is the God your think?

Paul: You do not have the love of God or the peace that comes by His love, a sure sign of whose rule you are under. Though the world is filled with false Christianity manifesting the same disunity as you do, that in no way negates the true. It only makes it shine all the brighter.

I could have sworn I read just now that you Christians have unity among yourselves, and here you are, a few words later, saying there is a false Christianity. How can you be sure you have the right one? You seem to think that many professing Christians have it all wrong, and are ruled by another, but not YOU! Yet you are not deluded, it is all the others, and people like me who are deluded. I am sorry, I cannot help you escape, Napoleon, you must do it yourself.

Paul: It really does not help your cause that you are so ill-informed in your opinions, Mike, and you can do no other.

You write: “...yet you will not consider history, and evil, and whether Christians with convictions like yours are not actually contributing to it, if not causing it.”

You are prone to exaggeration, my friend. I cannot issue papal bulls that the Catholic must obey, and nor do I invent churches that issue the same sort of infallible rules, as you seem to want to do. I offer my views as they have come to me in my life, and you and others can take them or leave them. We humans got where we are by adapting, not by being railroaded on sectarian lines by those crazed with power, thinking they had God pulling their strings. Anyone with that in their head is a madman whether it is the pope, Bush, Blair or you. I am not, thankfully, blessed with any such Truth! I have said above that I can read, and I have read what the Christian God said and did in His incarnation, and that should be your own personal standard. As soon as you start judging others, you have had it. The Greeks said, "Know thyself". It is precisely what Christians never know.

Paul: Here is a good example:

I never realised that Popes hated Paul so much. I have a longish page on Paul's teaching. As you are always telling me to read your testimonials, I shall say to you, "Read it". As for quick examples, what are we to do in respect of the authorities? Paul said we should be submissive and obedient to them (eg Titus 3:1), but God in his incarnation overturned tables in the temple courtyard in defiance of the authorities. If Christ had obeyed Paul, he could not have done it. Paul utterly falsely told Christians they would be saved from future judgment. That is not at all what Christ taught. He was so dramatic about it that he said it was preferable to tear out an eye lest you sin by it. So, God incarnate warned that you had to be constantly on guard, you, each of you, personally. You have no time to judge others. You were to look to your own salvation, and the wrong path and gate were broad, and the right one narrow. You lot think you are walking across a broad and wide bridge, contrary to what God taught, just because Paul assured you merely professing Christianity was enough. Too bad, again. God incarnate did not advocate faith alone, and if he did, he had no need to come to earth because Paul could have brought the message. The significance of Christ being God is that His authority is absolute but all of you Pauline Christians mainly ignore Christ. A young man asked what he had to do to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Did Christ say just have faith? Read it. It is in the bible. It is God's own prescription for salvation, if Christ is God.

Paul: We do recognize the revelation Truth that Brother Paul was given in Christ to preach to the world, and together with him (and with all those who believe), we worship the One Paul presented as our Lord and Savior. Prove that we worship Paul, with specifics. You have plenty of material to work with on our site, so you have no excuse for not backing up your words with evidence.

It is a revelation Paul claimed, by claiming he had received a vision. Any rogue or madman could make any such claim. Why is it necessary, when you have God's own words bound in the same book? I have already given examples just now, not that it will deter you. We have both agreed that the bible tells you that Satan is clever.

Paul: On the subject of Paul, here is an example where you misinterpret his words.

You write:

Can we clarify something here? Is salvation by faith alone, or by obeying the catalogues of laws or rules that Paul lays down here and all over the place? I thought Paul abrogated the law of God, but then he makes up a whole lot of new ones while at the same time telling Christians they are saved by faith. I expect you can explain it away, but for anyone rational it is incoherent. Anyway, Paul does repeatedly prescribe explicit rules and sexual matter are high among them, even though sexual matters are private ones. Paul had a thorn in his side, and was excessively prudish sexually. It seems quite possible that he had doubts about his own sexuality, and that would explain his unnatural concern with what should not concern him.

Paul: In identifying fornication as sin, Paul was not speaking ill of sexual intercourse any more than a judge sentencing a bank robber is speaking ill of money. You do not seem to really know what fornication is.

You write:

Ah! How much more comforting it is to be a moron for God. Paul made a big thing of fornication which is defined as unlawful sexual intercourse, meaning for a Christian that you are not married. Well, at the time most people were not Christians and so could hardly avoid fornicating. Many of his audience were Jews and they had a law given to them by God, so they knew what fornication was under the law of Moses, but how could your average Greek care what he was on about, and why should Paul care about them? The truth is that Paul often used fornication, as Jews did then, to mean ungodliness in general, and that is why he lists other sins under this heading. The Greeks still did not know what he was on about, and so it came into Christianity that sex was his main target, and who can say otherwise? All we can do is think what God could care about it. God really could not bother an iota. Sex was supposed to be His punishment to Adam and Eve, so why would he want to stop it? Only Christians are bothered because they all of them use Christianity to reflect their personal distaste for sexuality. It is psychology again.

Paul: If you really are so smart in this world, it only proves the Word of God and vindicates His wisdom:

"The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless" (1 Corinthians 3:20 EMTV).

So, "The Lord knows the thoughts of morons to be useful" and you are attending to every word of an accepted moron. To praise foolishness is hardly something that God could do, is it? After all, he made us in His own image with a brain. Does that come to you as a revelation? Christians think their brains are given by the Devil because they are obviously not supposed to use it, and Paul says so several times, knowing that they were indeed morons, and so they have remained. Try defying Satan and using your head.

Paul: You will have come to the place where you acknowledge you know nothing, just as we have, before you will know anything of value.

Just the first.

You say:

“We would be much better people to be freed of guilt because doing what comes naturally cannot usually be wrong.”

Marriage is a sacrament of that Pauline Church of yours. God made people sexual long before any marriage was invented, and when it was it was for priests to get money out of perfectly natural and necessary functions of being human. Society should have sanctions against those who do not support their children, not against those who have sex. If hey have sex without habving children that burden others in society then sex is no concern of anyone else. As for homosexuals, that too seems to be natural, and in early human societies homosexual men will have had functions without being a threat to the dominant males. I know you will hate any such suggestion, but what consenting men or women do together in private is none of your concern or mine. The trouble is that you have a thoroughly unnatural concern in what others are up to, to the exclusion of your own salvation. Physician! Heal thyself.

Paul: Does this mean you disagree with the Ten Commandments? Carrying your foolish reasoning along, you might find nothing wrong with murder because you get so angry you could kill someone. Did you know that God gave the Law to us through Moses, the man of God? Are you of the same mind as Hitler, whose goal it was to rid the world of the people of Moses, those who brought us what he called a “guilty conscience”? Your thinking is very similar to his:

“The Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world: Circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul. I come to free mankind from their shackles..."The Ten Commandments have lost their validity...Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision...” (Mein Kampf).

Heil Mike?

You get more pathetic as you go on, Mr Cohen. Cohen by name, cohen by nature, eh? Morals are a set of standards that people are encouraged to adopt because they are necessary for society to function. God has nothing to do with them, nor has elitist ideologies whether Nazi or Christian. Historically, it is hard to distinguish them. The Christian God advocated equality through the spirit of poorness. It was the poor who were blessed not the rich. Being blessed meant they would enter God's kingdom, for your information, not merely a word meaning they were vaguely appreciated. There was no room in God's kingdom for a rich man. The reason is evident. No one can get rich without someone else being deprived of the same amount of wealth. The rich were exploiters of humanity's efforts, and they took to themself unnatural amounts of power. That is why Christ overturned tables. God was not rewarding the rich but the poor. The rich were rewarding themselves. Now, if you have not read this in your bible, whatever EMTV means, then I suggest you read a more conventional one.

Moses is a myth. He is a Jewish Aeneas or King Arthur. He was invented about 300 BC. I do not deny, though, that the tale has lessons and morals in it. Most myths do. The ten commandments are rules for people living together in society. They are generally quite good rules, but then society has not fundamentally changed in several thousand years.

Ancient societies were bound by their beliefs in particular gods. Now there is no need for any such belief. We have moved on, but plainly, a successful society is one in which people can be secure. It is the lack of personal security in the USA that makes them insanely devoted. Their rulers know it, but encourage it for political reasons. The neocons openly admit it, but Christians follow Paul, and remain fools. Hitler was a devout Catholic Christian. Stalin, for your edification, was training to be a priest before he became a Bolshevik. Do try reading a bit, even if it is your own bible which you cannot seem to comprehend, even if you do read it, and that I doubt.

Paul: Again, had you red my testimony you would know that fornication is wrong and brings suffering to humanity. Now having been delivered of this sin, how grateful I am to know the difference between right and wrong. If only you knew the difference between right and wrong, you could open your eyes to the devastations caused by adultery, as just one example of the bitter fruits of following your lusts. You mentioned unwanted children. How about unwanted pregnancies and abortion? You think there is no price to pay for your sins? You are a fool.

You implied above that I was the one who had the sexual problem, now you admit you had it, and think you are rid of it. Perhaps you get rid of it by attacking all those who are still enjoying it. It is what they call the dog in the manger! Right and wrong has little to do with sexuality. It is to do with how we treat each other in society, if society is to be beneficial to us all. That is why the Christ of the gospels wanted people to love each other. He did not say hate everyone who enjoyed sex. You are to love everyone as your brother, or better still, to do unto others what you would have them do unto you. There is no need for unwanted pregnancies these days, and if they happen but the children would be left destitute then there is nothing wrong with abortion. Abortions that are not medically necessary, are the irresponsibility of people like Christians who force young women to hide their condition until it is too late. Most unwanted pregnancies can be ended as soon as they are noticed. It is hardly an abortion. What always astonishes me about you hypocrits is that you whine on about foetuses scarcely big enough to see, but happily murder people by the tens of thousand in your pseudo-religious crusades, like Bush's so-called war on terror. You are the Nazis, not me.

Paul: “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God! They acted corruptly; they have done abominable works, there is none who does good” (Psalms 14:1 MKJV).

And here is the evidence. Read a little Christian history without being sick. I have some of it on my pages. Nazis were human by comparison. They killed quickly and efficiently, Christians chose the slowest and most painful deaths, burning.

Paul: You pose a question as though you have us outwitted, so smart you are. You think to have it all figured out, even with your flawed understanding. We can answer your question, because our understanding is not flawed; we have the mind of Christ. And this is not arrogance and pride? You truly are a fool.

You ask:

“Do you believe that God gave up people to Satan? If he did then God is Satan, is He not?”

Nothing, if you did it, but you spread more darkness and misery and so you always have, while at the same time being convinced you are righteous. That is why you are ruled by Satan. You cannot see yourselves, you cannot use your brains, you cannot love anyone except yourselves, and take it upon yourself to judge others contrary to everything God taught, if Christ is He.

Best wishes, you need them,

Mike

Paul's reply:

Mike,

You are caught in your own trap, over and over. Every time you speak against the work of God, you further entangle yourself. No doubt an endless existence would be sheer hell for you, as you get progressively more confused and confounded. That would never do, and God has much better and greater things in mind. Regarding Him, one of the first things you must know, if you will refer to the Bible and call on others who profess faith to follow it, is this:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV).

Unless you have the mind of God, you cannot comprehend the meaning or intent of God as expressed in Scripture. It is an inaccessible, unopened book to you. We are here to open it to you and others. Whether you reject or receive it is not ours to determine or demand. We are not like the Catholic Church or you, who think that others are fools not to agree with you.

Why do we answer you then, when it is clear you are not a reasonable man, a mocker and blasphemer? We answer for the sake of Truth and for the sakes of the many that need to and will hear these things in order to have their eyes opened to the empty and bitter arguments of frustrated atheists.

The great error you continue to commit here is that you do not differentiate between false religion and true. In other words, you do not distinguish between the inventions of men and the work of God. You look only at those who use the things of God for personal gain and thereby dismiss God. You should be dismissing the former and retaining the Latter, instead of rejecting Him and using the corruption of others as an excuse to justify you in your own sinfulness.

You see God as evil because you are evil. You lump His words and deeds together with lying, usurping institutions such as the Catholic Church, and call it all evil. But the gospels and teachings of the apostles are as day and light to the night and darkness of false religion. The false religious crucified Jesus Christ, but you identify Him with them, as though they are one, when they are diametrically opposed. You speak as a servant of darkness and confusion.

You write: “Christians always demand that their critics offer proof when they just believe with no proof except the delusion they call faith.”

We can argue that we have given proof, and do, but that you do not have the eyes or ears to perceive it. Obviously we will not “win” that argument as long as you are deaf and blind, but the more immediate issue and problem for you is, where is your proof? You talk big, but have nothing. When we require substance you don’t have, you resent it and try to fake your way out. We have answered you, and will continue to do so, but all you can do is bluster about “rational scientific philosophy.” These words might impress fools but those without pretensions will readily see that all you do is posture and evade our questions.

You also go on the offensive, dispelling the notion (not that we had it) that intelligent discourse with you is possible.

You say: “I too believed in Christ, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as a child, but I grew out of childish beliefs as I matured.”

We have already told you that we did not believe in Jesus Christ because of, or during, our upbringing, whether we were indoctrinated by church attendance (which has nothing to do with Him) or knew virtually nothing about Him. Why do you refuse to inform yourself before opening your mouth and proving what a fool you are?

Linking Christ to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy is plain silly. Must we spell it out? We will, not for your sake, but for those who may read this on our site, which we look forward to posting as Exhibit A of the total bankruptcy of reason, substance, good will and moral fortitude in rabid atheist attack dogs like yourself.

Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are obvious fabrications and cannot be compared to an actual person Who lived and was seen by over 500 people after He was resurrected from the dead. Furthermore, these people had nothing personal to gain by declaring His resurrection, and much to lose. Many, in fact, lost their lives preaching Christ and testifying of what they had seen and heard from Him. After Jesus ascended to Heaven, He also returned, as further testified by these witnesses, on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, and filled them with His Spirit, to be with us forever. No one ever claimed to have been filled with the spirit of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and no one would care if they did. The history of the world does not center on either, but it does center on Jesus Christ.

As popular as Christmas is, where do you find a book thousands of years old, written in blood by over 40 authors, each in agreement with all others, a book preserved by nations, predicting and describing Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, defended and preached by countless numbers, having laid down their lives to do so?

Why are you so incensed by the testimony of Jesus Christ? Why do you ridicule the One Who laid down His life for you?

The answer is that you hate God and would not have Him rule over you. You perceive no threat from Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but you are threatened by the One Who bought you with His blood, and you resist Him to your destruction as the son of darkness that you are. How foolish to mock the One Who died for you in order to deliver you from your wretched state, listing Him among the asinine creations of men!

Yet you say: “I have approached Christianity coolly and rationally. I have looked into it over a long period, taking everything into account, but using what modern scholarship has revealed to us....”

Don’t flatter yourself. Your ability to process and assess the things of God is less than worthless. Men cannot know God in their own wisdom, no matter how cool or rational they think themselves to be (though you are neither):

“For the Word of the cross is foolishness to those being lost, but to us being saved, it is the power of God. For it has been written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the understanding ones.’ Where is the wise? Where the scribe? Where the lawyer of this world? Did God not make the wisdom of this world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save the ones believing” (1 Corinthians 1:18-21 LITV).

The result of your “rational” analysis is that you list Jesus Christ with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Need we say more? To further illustrate how far removed from rationality and reality you are, I present your next quote:

“I say nothing about your personal testimonies because I pointed out they were too tedious to read. I spoke about the 'essentially identical ones' I HAVE read, and they are the ones whose characteristics I outline.”

Either your language is so sloppy as to be virtually useless, or you are a compulsive liar, or both. Here is what you actually did say about our testimonies:

“As for your testimonies, as far as I read, which was not far because they were terribly tedious, they are quite as valueless as all the other essentially identical ones that I have read. You begin by believing because that is the way you were brought up, go through periods of doubt and angst and end up converted. Did you ever consider the psychology of it?”

How can you say something you did not read is “essentially identical” to something you did? How can you apply your conclusions about something you have red and outlined to our testimonies, which you have obviously not red (we did not start out as believers, for example)? Have you ever considered the psychology of your slipshod and twisted thinking? How can you, when you are deranged? You exhibit all those things of which you accuse us and others:

“You want to brag that your are different, well fine, but even if it is true, the outcome sounds to be the same bigoted, intolerant, know-nothings that born again Christians particularly show themselves to be.”

You write:

“I repeat that those who are not brought up as 'believers' rarely convert.”

And I repeat, what you are referring to is a man-made religious creed and system. It is not the experience of authentic faith and a new nature in God through Jesus Christ. All of our posted testimonies (now eight) are of this latter kind, and not the former that you criticize as if solely representative of Christ. Our testimonies stand as a firm rebuttal to your condemnation, and in turn condemn you for speaking when you do not even know what it is that you are condemning.

Representative of your irresponsible habit of conjecturing, your statements are peppered with words that indicate your uncertainty. You say to me:

“You sound as if you are rather desperately trying to convince yourself and offer these testimonies in evidence. It does not stop you from sounding like a "basket case" in this correspondence.”

I may “sound” that way to you, but my point is that I do not sound that way to others who know me better and who are far more closely aligned with your beliefs than mine. Your conclusions are strictly your own, with no corroboration or even agreement from those you would consider credible. You are chock-full of irreconcilable contradictions. Here are more:

“To spell it out, some people can seem to be sane when they are mad. In my opinion, anyone aho believes in invisible buddies are insane, but they can seem as sane as anyone else when they keep it to themselves.”

Why should it be strange that the Creator is a Spirit by Whom all things consist? Where do you think life came from and is sustained? What brilliant explanation do you have for the existence of this physical world and realm? It just came from nowhere? A big bang out of nothingness, like the things you write?

After I explained to you how God has proven Himself in my life by His complete sovereignty over all things in every detail, you respond:

“Isn't that what they all say?”

My very next words, already sitting there in front of you, appropriately answer your question:

“You make absolute statements that are unprovable, which makes them inadmissible and useless.”

While you make unsubstantiated statements about us, your statements are demonstrably wrong. You create one straw man after another, using them to attack the Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ, and those that walk in His faith, but we tear them all to little pieces with substance. As I continue responding to your letter, there will be other such examples with corrections of your Bible explanations.

You deny that mankind needs salvation as spoken of in Scripture:

“Believing in a rabbit's foot to bring you good luck is a false belief, and believing in an invisible buddy to make you good or bring you some unnecessary salvation is no different, arguably worse because you are believing in nothing. That is why belief in God is such a good scam.”

In our testimonies we list some of the sins from which we have been delivered. How can you argue with that? We have been delivered from the darkness that kept us from realizing we were in sin - the darkness in which you presently reside and boast. There is nothing imaginary at all about what has happened in our lives, as is well documented. How is it a scam that we are no longer unthankful, fearful and selfish, instead having peace, joy, and useful purpose in our lives? Since when has a rabbit’s foot done anything like that?

Just because some use God as a cover to do what they want, which is a scam (and we don’t call it good), does not negate the expression of holiness of those doing what is good and right in Jesus Christ. The authors of the Bible testify of these things from first hand experience, while those who make church organizations such as the Catholic and Anglican churches are the ones perpetrating the scam.

You, in your perverse way, empower the false ones by giving them credit for the things of God. You acknowledge them in place of the True, which you deny exists. The True is the source of the Bible, while the false use the Bible to usurp the authority of God. In a perverse way you agree with the usurpers; that which consumes you rules you.

You go on about the scam: “The Christian scam is that you must believe a figure exactly as realistic as Santa Claus to live forever.”

You wrongly perceive eternal life solely as quantity, when it is a matter of quality, which is not transferable to our corrupt natures. You erroneously see eternal life as something under our control by mental assent or agreement, rather than a change of nature by grace beyond our attainment. These are things you have been taught by false religion, known as Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.

Knowing Jesus Christ is eternal life, not doctrine or mental belief. This reality comes by revelation and change of nature, something with which you are entirely unfamiliar. All you can do is deny what you have not experienced, and say it does not exist.

You write:

“God...was responsible for all the wickedness of the Jewish scriptures that Christians purloined as their own and called the Old Testament.”

You have not red as carefully as you brag you have. The Old Testament is a record of man’s wickedness. Do you think you are exempt?

And did Christians purloin the Jewish Scriptures? The Christians who recorded the New Testament were Jews, except for Luke. True Christians, regardless of physical birth, are true Jews (Romans 2:29 ). Jesus Christ, as recorded by Pilate, is King of the Jews. It is all the record of God, to those who believe. To those like you who do not believe, nothing is pure, and even your mind and conscience is defiled (Titus 1:15 ). That is why you falsely accuse:

“Your gospel argument is called sophistry.”

“Sophistry: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.” You are trying to divine our motives, which means you “perceive intuitively or through some inexplicable perceptive powers.” You are operating in the realm of the unseen and that which is un-verifiable by scientific method. You do believe in the spiritual realm after all, though you condemn us for speaking from it!

So who is the one practicing sophistry here? You say God is imaginary, yet you tell me you understand better than I do what He is saying, because you believe His plain words. How can you believe them when you do not even believe He exists? Are you not the one displaying deceitful ingenuity? This is consistent with your hypocrisy, calling me on the things you do.

“'The first will be last and the last first' was what Christ meant by being humble. You think you are first!”

More opinion and attempts at divination. You are batting zero, Mike. Because I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and speak on His authority does not mean I am making myself first. It means I have been granted to make Him first. But if by being last, I was made first, what is that to you? How do you know what He meant if He is fictitious?

Your very words and attitude label the Bible as an unreliable display of arrogance, written by men who recorded the words of God spoken by men! Knowing what one is talking about is not arrogance. Not knowing and presenting opinion as worthy or credible, as you do, is arrogance.

You do bring up some worthwhile questions. You ask:

“If men cannot be humble then why would God expect them to be humble. Is God asking what is impossible?”

Yes; He is; of which Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God . When His incredulous disciples responded, “Who then can be saved?” He said, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

We did fail at being humble and at keeping the Law of God perfectly, as He requires. But that is not a problem for God:

“Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and exalt and honor the King of Heaven, all Whose works are truth and His ways judgment. And those who walk in pride He is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37 MKJV).

It is the grace of God that He humbles one. It was not by our strength or righteousness, of which we had neither, that we were made right with God, but by His through Jesus Christ.

How does this apply to you? When God has humbled you to the point where you say, “It is true; I have been a fool, speaking in defense of lawlessness and sin because rejecting the One Who laid down His life for me,” then you will be at a starting point to begin to hear the Truth. Then you will begin to be emptied of yourself and vain philosophies and speculation, learning to live by every Word of God. As Jesus said:

“It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God'" (Matthew 4:4 MKJV).

Which means you are not alive, Mike. You will find that there is no good thing in you, and what you cannot and could not do, He empowers you to do, as you look to Him. That is salvation, the great purpose of God in His appearing in Christ.

And how can these things happen to you unless you hear the Truth? So we are sent to preach for your sake. The Truth will stop your lies and, eventually, the liar who tells them. Lies such as this:

“Well this same man you call Christ, God and the Son of God, denied as plainly as possible that he was God, but you still say he is. He denied fairly plainly that he was the son of David but you cannot understand that, and go around saying he was (or is).”

Jesus Christ never denied He was God. He affirmed it. You show us where He plainly denied He was God, and we will show you where He plainly affirmed it. Let’s start with His questioning the religious on how the Christ could be called David’s son, something to which you refer:

“What do you think of Christ? Whose Son is He? They say to Him, David's. He said to them, How then does David by the Spirit call Him Lord, saying, ‘The LORD said to my Lord, Sit on My right until I make Your enemies Your footstool for Your feet?’ If David then calls Him Lord, how is He his son?” (Matthew 22:42-45 MKJV).

Jesus says that the Christ is much more than a son of man, though He was that too. The main point is that He is the Lord our God, just as Thomas said:

“And Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28 EMTV)

Jesus did not correct Thomas, as you claim He did or would. So where are you getting your information, Mike?

But Jesus did say this about Who He was:

“Therefore I said to you that you shall die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24 MKJV).

Call Him whatever you will, the fact remains that if you do not believe on Him you are dead in your sins and will remain so until that changes.

You ask an interesting series of questions:

“Is the bible your God? Is the bible inerrant? Can anything in this imperfect world be perfect? You believe the bible is true and so you believe in Christ and God and therefore you believe the bible. Clever, eh?”

That is the approach of the false Christians and believers made by men, those who worship the Bible, not God. It is not cleverness so much as laboring under deceit. To such Jesus said:

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about Me. But you are unwilling to come to Me, so that you may have life” (John 5:39 -40 EMTV).

We believe the Bible is true, containing the Essence of Truth, because we believe in Christ. This is called having “the horse in front of the cart.”

You say:

“More and more of the bible is being exposed as false, but you will not accept it. You cannot. Your beliefs depend on it.”

My beliefs come from God, not from a book. You could get rid of every Bible in existence, but unless you can get rid of Him, you cannot destroy my faith or knowledge of Him one iota.

But you are also mistaken about the Bible; it is not being exposed as false at all. At every turn it is proven to be true. We challenge you to specifically show us otherwise. Again, give us substance. You need to expand your reading beyond that of ignorant, bigoted and bitter atheists, who carry a chip on their shoulders and look for any way to reject the Ultimate Authority, our Lord and Creator, propagating silly nonsense like evolution.

And don’t tell us you do not get incensed when your postulations and theories are questioned, much less debunked. It is on account of your rage that you are a mad man, making outlandish and foolish statements and going so far as to even publish them on the net.

Here is an example where you lump genuine faith with superstition and angel/devil worship:

“All that false believe in angels and demons left us bereft of proper investigation into Nature for over a millennium and when people suffered misery despite their prayers.”

We are not angel worshipers, but worshipers of God. He is the Creator, having power over all realms and things. While the institutionalized false church has sought control over people for its own ends, bringing misery to many, true believers have brought truth and freedom to many. If not for such you would still be living under the hard thumb of the Catholic Church, if not other tyrants. Not appreciating what freedoms you have had by the hand of God’s servants, the Muslims are even now coming your way, to show you what real repression is all about.

In your willful ignorance you rant at the Hand that has fed you:

“You are arrogant to propound failed nostrums. I accept what anyone intelligent today accepts -- biology, mathematics, physics, medicine, and so on. You stick to mythology, if you like but keep it to yourself.”

All true knowledge is based on what God has made and revealed to men. Many scientists who plainly confess this are also ones you have accepted as “intelligent.” Why do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?

There are also many scientists who have no idea what they are talking about, like evolutionists, whose “theories” are utter madness, unsupported by one single solitary fact, let alone many, though they look high and low for proof. They find none because there is none. Read Theories of Evolution - The Vain Imaginations of Fools.

Where would you be without the contributions of all those who have believed in God? And you call them arrogant in their belief? Just what great contribution to scientific understanding for the benefit of humanity have you made lately? You are a pipsqueak - a small, foolish man with a loud mouth who can do nothing but criticize without giving anyone anything of value. That is pathetic.

What do you know or understand about nature, anyway? And what do the establishments of men that you idolize understand, truly? Johann Grander, an Austrian naturalist/scientist/inventor, has discovered principles of water that the institutes of “higher learning” have not yet understood or acknowledged, though observing them undeniable in results. They pooh-pooh his inventions while they are proven to work at many established businesses, like BMW or the Chinese railway system.

Why do your scientist heroes “debunk” what works? Because they are also in darkness, just like you, protecting their knowledge at the cost of Truth.

Grander, not a religious man, credits God with his inventions. He says he has been led by God to discover what he has, so he can take no credit for what God has freely given to him.

Has Santa Claus led anyone to discover or employ the secrets of nature?

You posed this question in your previous letter: “It seems to a lot of us who do not share your delusions that Christianity is Satanic. How can you demonstrate conclusively to me that it is not?”

After I answered, you indignantly declared: “Did I say I believed in Satan?”

Did you not say, “Christianity is Satanic”? If you do not believe in the existence of Satan, why are you talking about him and attributing his characteristics to what we believe? If God and the devil are imaginary, then why do you argue about them at all? What is up with belligerently throwing out statements like this and then backing off, saying you do not believe in that which you brought up? Do you also argue with people who believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? Mike, are there more obvious manifestations of a damned fool?

However, as I have told you, much of what you call Christianity is satanic, and has no more belief in God than you do. For them it is make-believe.

You say we make God out to be “the Idiot, because [He] is supposed to be almighty but he is not mighty enough to realize that you are not doing what he came down to earth to tell you.”

What are you talking about? He is Almighty. He knows everything, and isn’t surprised mankind is not obeying Him. Pigs will sprout wings and fly before that happens. And He also knows you cannot be as He is. He is only waiting for you to find this out. You will find it out when you are brought into conviction by the Law of God, that it is good, but you are not. All of this is determined by Him. The one who is a fool is the one who does not believe God is in control.

You say, “You have the sin of pride because you are sure you are ‘saved’. Sorry chum. It is not that easy. Read your bible. And who is it that you are raised up in to make your so proud? Are you sure that Christ of yours is the God your think?”

There is no pride in being saved, exactly the opposite because it is entirely His work in Jesus Christ (though many thinking to be saved, yet are not, are proud and boast of it). The glory is His. As for being easy, the testimonies and postings on our website promote no such idea. We testify of nothing other than what the Lord promised, that all need to strive to enter in the narrow gate, and as Paul taught, that one can only enter the Kingdom of God through much tribulation. Finding all His words to be true, and having experienced His faithfulness in keeping His promises through His omnipotent power, I am entirely sure that Christ is God and have staked my life on it.

You read very carelessly, Mike. You think I called you Catholic but I never said anything of the sort. I only said that your attitude is no different than the popes, who also issue many proclamations that have no basis in reality, yet expect to be believed and cannot be reasoned into forsaking their lies and errors. While you do not claim to be infallible, you act that way, so what is the difference? You offer your views, which you say others can take or leave, but what about you changing your views when you are shown to be wrong?

You read the Bible very carelessly. You say:

“I have read what the Christian God said and did in His incarnation, and that should be your own personal standard. As soon as you start judging others, you have had it. The Greeks said, "Know thyself". It is precisely what Christians never know.”

Christ said to take the beam out of your own eye, and then you could remove the speck from your brother’s. In other words, people like you who see huge problems with others, those falsely professing God, for example, need to get right before you could be of help to any of them (or are you at all interested in helping anyone? We say, “no”). The reason the specks in their eyes look so large to you is because of the huge beam in your own. You can only know yourself by first being judged and removing that beam. God’s judgment is here in the things we make known of you.

Your problems and criticisms of Paul’s teachings are all easily refuted and corrected. Your statements:

“Paul said we should be submissive and obedient to authorities (eg Titus 3:1), but God in his incarnation overturned tables in the temple courtyard in defiance of the authorities. If Christ had obeyed Paul, he could not have done it.”

There is no authority but of God, and He (Christ) is the Ultimate Authority, therefore authorized to do what He deems necessary.

The reason Christ overturned the tables was precisely because those who set up shop there had no authority to make the house of God a “house of merchandising.”

Jesus did indeed teach to obey those who are rightfully in authority. For example, He said:

“Therefore render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's” (Luke 20:25 MKJV).

Of those who abused their authority, such as the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus rebuked, He said:

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. Therefore whatever they may say to you to observe, observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do” (Matthew 23:2-3 EMTV).

After Christ descended upon the apostles in Spirit, He made sure to let the religious authorities know that their mandate came from God, and that their allegiance was to Him rather than to those who tried to prohibit the preaching of God in His Name:

“But answering, Peter and the apostles said, It is right to obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29 LITV).

You write:

“Paul utterly falsely told Christians they would be saved from future judgment. That is not at all what Christ taught. He was so dramatic about it that he said it was preferable to tear out an eye lest you sin by it.”

There is nothing false about what Paul said (you never provide quotes), and it was not contradictory to what Christ said. Not knowing or understanding either, it is only natural that one led by an evil and faultfinding disposition would be so mistaken. Paul taught that those who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and were reconciled to God through Him were delivered from wrath, present and future:

“Much more then, having been justified now by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:9-10 EMTV).

Jesus taught the same. He said:

“I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26 EMTV)

The reason Paul preached the same thing as the Lord Jesus Christ is because Paul was His servant and brother, filled with His Holy Spirit.

You write:

“You lot think you are walking across a broad and wide bridge, contrary to what God taught, just because Paul assured you merely professing Christianity was enough. Too bad, again. God incarnate did not advocate faith alone, and if he did, he had no need to come to earth because Paul could have brought the message.”

You give a very Catholic argument to a false Protestant notion of “sola fide.” And once again, you refer to what Paul or Jesus said but do not provide the exact quotes. You assume you know what they were saying and that we should take your word for it. However, we find you wrong every time. Paul never said any such thing about professing “Christianity.” He only spoke of professing Christ, Who saves us, and not any religion, which is all you can see.

Paul also did not teach that faith void of godliness would save anyone. The faith he talked about led to obedience and the upholding of the Law. As one of multitudinous examples, he said to the Romans:

“Do we then make the Law void through faith? Let it not be! But we establish the Law” (Romans 3:31 MKJV).

Your problem is that you do not know this faith and the obedience that comes of it (not unlike so many who do profess faith). Here is Paul’s teaching on the faith of Christ:

“But the righteousness of faith says this: ‘Do not say in your heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven?’ that is, to bring Christ down; or ‘Who shall descend into the deep?’; that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what does it say? ‘The Word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart’; that is, the Word of Faith which we proclaim; because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:6-9 MKJV).

It is evident that this faith is not a matter of Law-keeping, but of believing on Him Who saves us, which means we are made to be like Him, keeping the Law according to His ways and standards.

“But now the revelation of Jesus Christ is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26 KJV).

So, Paul did not preach justification by belief in doctrine, but by the active faith of Christ operating in those who believe. He knew that Christ did not come to teach doctrine, as men think and do. He came to lay down His life for our sins, and to take it up again for our justification. Without the forgiveness that comes by His sacrifice, and the receiving of His Spirit that comes by His resurrection from the dead, none of us would know or understand anything of God. We would not be able to keep His commandments by faith. We would all be dead in our sins, like you.

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins!” (1 Corinthians 15:17 EMTV)

You write:

“The significance of Christ being God is that His authority is absolute but all of you Pauline Christians mainly ignore Christ.”

It is amazing that you candidly confess that you are not infallible, but then make absolute statements that imply you have omniscient knowledge. Our website, however, proves you wrong, though you cannot see it. Nevertheless it is still up to you to prove what you say, which you cannot, because it is not true.

You write:

“A young man asked what he had to do to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Did Christ say just have faith? Read it. It is in the bible. It is God's own prescription for salvation, if Christ is God.”

You imply that Paul would have told the young man that since he believed in Christ he was saved, and there was nothing more to do. A couple major things are wrong with your picture.

First, what Jesus said to the young man was not a generic prescription for salvation. He told this person in particular what he lacked. When another rich man, Zacchaeus, sought out the Lord, not a word was said about selling all his goods. And when Zacchaeus said he would give away half his goods to the poor, which the Lord did not ask him to do, Jesus said that salvation had come to his house “this day.” Selling all he had was not required.

Second, Paul also dealt with people as individuals, with different needs, and led them as the Lord gave him. So Paul would have done the very same thing as Jesus did with that individual, because it was Christ leading Paul, not Paul leading himself. Paul also did not give people free passes because they believed or said they believed. He required they behave responsibly and be worthy of the calling of faith in Christ. For example, of widows being taken care of by the believers, he said:

“Let a widow be enrolled having become not less than sixty years, the wife of one man, being witnessed by good works, if she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints' feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work” (1 Timothy 5:9-10 EMTV).

That doesn’t sound at all like your depiction of Paul as one preaching, “Just believe and you are fine, forget having to be responsible in any way to the commandments of God or for the sake of others.”

You are making things up as you go along to suit and support your God-denial. You find it convenient to do so by denouncing His servant, Paul the apostle, whom I wrote taught by personal revelation knowledge of Christ. You replied:

“It is a revelation Paul claimed, by claiming he had received a vision. Any rogue or madman could make any such claim. Why is it necessary, when you have God's own words bound in the same book?”

Many rogues make claims, like Joseph Smith, for example. However, Paul’s revelation of Christ was supported from many aspects, and was far more than a single experience. What happened on the road to Damascus was only the beginning, not the extent of his experience of God. The preaching and teachings encompassing his full revelation came many years later. What transpired after God stopped Paul on his way to persecute the saints only proved that God had indeed apprehended him. A madman having hallucinations does not produce fruits such as Paul has. Multitudes have been changed for the better (with us among them), as has the world, by the gospel he preached in Christ.

For example, whose lives are being changed for the better by your teachings and who is talking about your thoughts, which, as you say, people can take or leave? But here we are talking about what Paul recorded for our sakes, things that bring life to those who believe, through the knowledge of God in Christ.

The reason it has been necessary to have and preach this revelation of God in Christ is so that people will know God. A book is not enough, even a true Book inspired by God. All must know God firsthand to have life, just as Paul did.

You operate under the mistaken premise that Jesus Christ came to give us a creed and certain knowledge by which we could attain to godliness. Neither He nor Paul nor we teach that though many without understanding do. If having people believe the Bible was sufficient for salvation, then we would be living in a very different and far better world, given the great number of people who claim to do so. But many of those who believe in the Bible are only trusting in themselves, not in God. Jesus rebuked those who thought to find life in the Bible while rejecting God’s coming in the flesh, in human beings:

As we read on, you reverse your first opinion that Paul preached salvation by faith without works to now saying that he taught salvation by works. You imply that the problem is Paul’s, but it is your opinion that keeps shifting and creating problems for you because you do not know what you are talking about.

You write:

“Can we clarify something here? Is salvation by faith alone, or by obeying the catalogues of laws or rules that Paul lays down here and all over the place? I thought Paul abrogated the law of God, but then he makes up a whole lot of new ones while at the same time telling Christians they are saved by faith. I expect you can explain it away, but for anyone rational it is incoherent.”

Who says you are rational? That is only your opinion. The facts demonstrated here speak otherwise. That is because you are, as one who denies his Creator, a fool.

I do not explain this matter away, but give a valid explanation that only does away with what is wrong and problematic in the first place. It reconciles what only appears contradictory to those who do not see the whole picture.

Paul preached salvation by faith in Christ, a state of grace that upholds the Law of God rather than violates it. Salvation is by the faith of Christ alone, but that faith is the very power by which Christ raised Himself from the dead, which does the same thing in those who believe, raising them from their dead state towards God’s righteousness to produce works according to His Character and Laws. Otherwise, what is called “faith” is not His faith at work.

Paul taught these things, no different than Jesus, Who said that He came not to do away with, but to fulfill, the Law (Matthew 5:17 ). Jesus taught that the requirements of the Law were much higher than those of religious legalists, who knew the Bible, but did not know Him.

Only by the Spirit of God in Christ indwelling us can we know and fulfill the Law. Thus the need for His faith and grace.

The presence or absence of the fruits of faith is the way we can tell the true Christian from the false professor.

As for Paul making up new laws, show us one. There is no such thing. He only explained and taught how the eternal Law of God applies to our lives.

Returning to your obsession with sex, you continue trying to pawn off on Paul your own problem:

“Anyway, Paul does repeatedly prescribe explicit rules and sexual matter are high among them, even though sexual matters are private ones. Paul had a thorn in his side, and was excessively prudish sexually. It seems quite possible that he had doubts about his own sexuality, and that would explain his unnatural concern with what should not concern him.”

What “explicit rules” do you have a problem with? Do you think you should be able to have sexual intercourse with your father’s wife? Or do you prefer using a man’s rectum, out of which he defecates, to simulate that, or to take a penis in your mouth? Paul wasn’t stopping you. He wasn’t judging the heathen in how they lived their lives, only those who believed, who were delivered from their sins by Jesus Christ.

But do you think that you and others are not paying a high price for your fornications, sodomy and adultery? Think again! That is why you are called to repentance, as all are, for your own good. Not repenting, you destroy yourselves.

Your characterization of Paul is absurd, sheer speculation. You have no proof for any of it. It is just more of your evil surmisings and popish statements. You falsely accuse one who exposes your sinfulness, manufacturing evidence against him where none exists, just like your Catholic cousins and other religious have done throughout the ages with the saints of God.

You think your thoughts so important and worthy that you build a site to proudly broadcast them, not realizing how transparent you are in your jealousy and bad temper, which makes you irrational. You have no just cause to angrily dismiss Jesus Christ, the Lord God Almighty. All of that comes out in this dialogue, which is why we will post it on our site, with all of your words intact.

Here, for example, is a prime example of your illogical, illegitimate declarations:

“Paul made a big thing of fornication which is defined as unlawful sexual intercourse, meaning for a Christian that you are not married. Well, at the time most people were not Christians and so could hardly avoid fornicating.”

You do not have to be a Christian to have a lawful marriage. God is God of all people. Those He brings together in marriage are in legitimate union, no matter what they believe. “What God has joined together let no man tear asunder.”

Whether lawful or not, though, Paul was not trying to police those who did not believe:

“Now, what I meant was that you should not associate with people who call themselves brothers or sisters in the Christian faith but live in sexual sin, are greedy, worship false gods, use abusive language, get drunk, or are dishonest. Don't eat with such people. After all, do I have any business judging those who are outside the Christian faith? Isn't it your business to judge those who are inside? God will judge those who are outside. Remove that wicked man from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:11 -13 GW).

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were teachable, Mike, and could admit to being wrong? But you prefer death, and death is what you have and sow.

You write:

“Sex was supposed to be His punishment to Adam and Eve, so why would he want to stop it? Only Christians are bothered because they all of them use Christianity to reflect their personal distaste for sexuality. It is psychology again.”

Nowhere is it said that God punished Adam and Eve with sex. Do you punish your children by making them eat ice cream? Why do you say such stupid things? It is not that your brain is deficient in ability to know these things, but your atheistic doctrine has made you stupid. It has made you say things like Christians have “personal distaste for sexuality.” I personally don’t know any Christians for which that can be said. You plainly do not know what you are talking about. You are living in a world that exists only inside your head. In it you are the wisest of men. That is why I told you this truth that applies to you:

“The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless” (1 Corinthians 3:20 EMTV).

You responded:

“So, 'The Lord knows the thoughts of morons to be useful' and you are attending to every word of an accepted moron. To praise foolishness is hardly something that God could do, is it?”

God does not praise your brand of foolishness, which you call wisdom. That is the precise point of the saying. Here is the rest of the context:

“Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’; and again, ‘The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless’” (1 Corinthians 3:18 -20 EMTV).

Have you not been caught in your own trap? Yes, but you cannot admit it because that is the pride of your wisdom, and the downfall of your foolishness. You fault “Christians” as if they are morons and you are so smart. Yet time and time again you are the one who is found to be making alarmingly stupid remarks, like this:

“Christians think their brains are given by the Devil because they are obviously not supposed to use it, and Paul says so several times, knowing that they were indeed morons, and so they have remained. Try defying Satan and using your head.”

Paul said that all those in Christ have been given sound minds (2 Timothy 1:7). He said that we have the mind of God (1 Corinthians 2:16 ). He also talked about those such as yourself, whose minds have been blinded by the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). So where are you getting your ideas? Satan, the god of this world, is very intelligent, the most cunning of all God’s creation (Genesis 3:1). Did you really think that you could outthink him?

“As for homosexuals, that too seems to be natural, and in early human societies homosexual men will have had functions without being a threat to the dominant males. I know you will hate any such suggestion, but what consenting men or women do together in private is none of your concern or mine. The trouble is that you have a thoroughly unnatural concern in what others are up to, to the exclusion of your own salvation.”

Here is the description given by God of the natural dispositions of all men:

“Just as it is written: There is none righteous, no not one, There is none who understands; there is none who seeks God. All have turned aside; together they became unprofitable; there is not one doing kindness, there is not so much as one. Their throat is an opened grave; with their tongues they deceived; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; Ruin and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they did not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10 -18 EMTV).

Homosexuality is just one more fruit of mankind’s perversity and crookedness that has led him to reject the goodness of God, and to be heedless of His Law and Person as recounted in Romans 1:

And is this a matter of no concern? To the fools of Sodom who are destroyed, it is not. Those who love God and their neighbors do not wish such destruction on others.

You write:

“You get more pathetic as you go on, Mr Cohen. Cohen by name, cohen by nature, eh?”

If there is no God, then how is it you are disparaging of His people, the Jews, who are distinctive from others because He has chosen them? What is a Jew, according to you, but another human being that evolved from the slime and has no more significance than any other? Why do you then hate them and what they have brought to the world? Has not God proved Himself in the Jew? Have I not correctly likened you to Hitler?

You write:

“Morals are a set of standards that people are encouraged to adopt because they are necessary for society to function. God has nothing to do with them, nor has elitist ideologies whether Nazi or Christian. Historically, it is hard to distinguish them.”

You claim that God does not exist, so, according to you, He has nothing to do with anything. Are we just supposed to take your word for these things, as we are expected to with your close cousin, the pope?

You write:

“The Christian God advocated equality through the spirit of poorness. It was the poor who were blessed not the rich....There was no room in God's kingdom for a rich man.”

The poor whom Jesus said are blessed are the poor in spirit. How are they poor in spirit? They do not trust in themselves, their intellects, knowledge, powers and wealth of all kinds. Those who trust in any of these riches cannot enter into the Kingdom of God . Only those who look to God alone are poor enough to enter His Kingdom.

That explains how Zacchaeus, a rich man, was said by Jesus to have been visited by the salvation of God “this day.” It explains how other saints were rich in material things, such as Abraham, the father of all those in faith. Paul did not speak against wealth, only against trusting in wealth:

“Charge the rich in the present age not to be high-minded, nor to set hope on the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, the One offering to us richly all things for enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17 LITV).

Which also nullifies your lame claim that Paul and other true Christians preach against the lawful enjoyment of those things God has created, such as the sexual union of man and wife.

You write:

“The reason is evident. No one can get rich without someone else being deprived of the same amount of wealth.”

This is plain, socialistic, sour grapes nonsense and many in the world know it. Building riches is not a zero sum gain. Many innovations enrich the larger world, a net gain rather than a loss for society. Not only that, those who lose, like the buggy whip makers in the days of the advent of automobiles, also gain by the new opportunities and possibilities presented. You sound like a sore loser, one who does not contribute anything to the welfare of his community, yet expects to be honored anyway. You take for granted the many things others have worked hard to provide you with, even disdaining them in your bitterness.

You were born a tad late to live in your ideal utopia – atheistic, communistic Soviet Union in its heyday. And now it seems the only thing physically sustaining a miserable Russia is the wealth of oil.

You write:

“The rich were exploiters of humanity's efforts, and they took to themself unnatural amounts of power. That is why Christ overturned tables. God was not rewarding the rich but the poor. The rich were rewarding themselves. Now, if you have not read this in your bible, whatever EMTV means, then I suggest you read a more conventional one.”

So Christ is not a myth and the Bible is a legitimate basis for authority after all? Just because you can read does not mean you can comprehend what men have written. How much less can you comprehend what God is saying through men, inspired by His Spirit!

Jesus Christ said why He overturned the tables and it does not agree with your communistic agenda. It did not have to do with commerce, but with what kind and where it was practiced; those who sought personal advantage used God to exploit others, bringing shame to His Name. He said to those whom He drove from the Temple of God :

“It is written, 'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46 EMTV).

No doubt there are others who exploit people in various ways not good, and each receives a just recompense for their ways. That is the Law of God.

You say, “Moses is a myth.” You think to explain what Jesus meant by the things He said, and how we have it all wrong, following Paul rather than Jesus, but, according to you, Jesus Christ believed in myths and propagated them, and even He was a myth, like the Tooth Fairy. So why do you bother telling us what He meant? You are totally confused and confounded.

There is no doubt that Moses was real, because otherwise Christ would not have spoken of him to those that presumed to follow him:

“Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you--Moses, in whom you have hoped. For if you believed Moses, you would have believed Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47 EMTV)

Not only is Moses not a myth, but he is presently alive, as seen with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:30), because all the saints are alive in Him:

“But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32 EMTV).

You write:

“You implied above that I was the one who had the sexual problem, now you admit you had it, and think you are rid of it. Perhaps you get rid of it by attacking all those who are still enjoying it.”

“Perhaps” is another way of admitting you are only guessing. But there is no “perhaps” here because you are wrong. I was not set free from fornication by pointing the finger at others, but by having it pointed at me, rightfully so. Praise God, He meant it for my good. Your accusations are baseless lies coming from evil motives.

At least you now admit you have a sexual problem. As for enjoying it, people enjoy many things that are destructive. The knife and fork, for example, are known instruments of death for many. What about alcohol and cigarettes? So what that you enjoy something? You need ears to hear the truth, a heart to do what is right, and a mind from God to know the difference between good and evil. Otherwise, you go on destroying yourself in your sin.

You write:

“Abortions that are not medically necessary, are the irresponsibility of people like Christians who force young women to hide their condition until it is too late.”

Where are you living? I don’t see anyone forced to hide anything. If one does not go out enough to see it live, it can be watched on “reality” TV. The problem is not that people are ashamed and afraid to do evil, it is that there is no shame in doing evil. You keep on trucking, though, building your straw men and knocking them down, the hero Don Quixote playing to his imaginary audience.

You write:

“Most unwanted pregnancies can be ended as soon as they are noticed. It is hardly an abortion. What always astonishes me about you hypocrits is that you whine on about foetuses scarcely big enough to see, but happily murder people by the tens of thousand in your pseudo-religious crusades, like Bush's so-called war on terror. You are the Nazis, not me.”

The bigger the straw men you build, the harder they fall. You say you have red our site. How much did you find there about abortion, or pumping up the public for “pseudo-religious crusades” in Iraq or elsewhere? What have we said about the war on terror? You are a blithering fool and liar, totally irresponsible with your mouth. That which you abuse shall surely be taken from you.

The reason we do not harp on such issues is because the issue is repentance for all from all of your sins, the main one being independence from God, whether the wrapper says “Atheist” or “Christian.” You are a hypocrite for condemning false Christians while doing all the things for which you condemn them and more. You also hate the true brethren of God, which makes you a murderer, and your ungodly rantings are poison to all who ingest them.

While some protest abortion in the Name of Christ, you protest their protest in your own name, but do not see the hypocrisy of your ways. So are the ways of the proud hypocrite who is rich in himself, the very kind of person Jesus rebuked, as we do here.

Paul

A final note from Victor: Let this be clear: To us, this dialogue with you is not about power or cleverness. To us, right is might, and not the other way around, as with you. It is not about a smart aleck competition to see who argues better. We have offered you rational thought and expression, not limited to our opinion but backed with substance of logic, reason, knowledge, and a sound use of the Scriptures, quoting specifically. Thus far, all you have done is come up with inane opinion and reasonings, unable to substantiate them, or give any justification whatsoever.

Having said that, while we have been blunt and strong with you, our purpose has not been to overcome or humiliate you, but rather to expose the darkness that has overcome you, and which holds you in evident destruction and misery. Take it personally because you have personally embraced your foolishness, making you a fool (which, believe us, we have all been), but separate yourself, personally, from your personal darkness and we (indeed, God) will personally “dis-identify” you from your foolishness, for you will be no more a fool. You will have heeded wisdom; you will be pardoned and ready to enjoy life for the first time in your existence. And we will be right there rejoicing with you, thankful that darkness has not forever maintained its merciless power grip on you, wasting your entire sojourn here on earth, whether by false religion, false philosophy, irrationality, spiritual and psychological wounds and influences of the past, or any other thing. Satan’s death grip will have been broken. We won’t be the only ones rejoicing over and with you, Mike. As Jesus Christ, the One and Only Savior of all mankind, said:

“Even so, I say to you, There is joy among the angels of God, when one sinner is turned away from his wrongdoing” (Luke 15:10 BBE).

Mike's reply within Paul's letter (in blue):

Dear Paul,

You wrote:

Paul: You are caught in your own trap, over and over. Every time you speak against the work of God, you further entangle yourself. No doubt an endless existence would be sheer hell for you, as you get progressively more confused and confounded. That would never do, and God has much better and greater things in mind. Regarding Him, one of the first things you must know, if you will refer to the Bible and call on others who profess faith to follow it, is this:

You are evidently claiming to have the mind of God. The "Scripture" is closed to me but open to you. That is the very delusion that all of you Christians have. You all think you are God, and you, and only you and your friends with common thoughts can think like God. God's thoughts are higher than your thoughts and his ways higher than your ways, He says clearly enough here, but you are the exception. The reason why religion is dangerous is because any number of ordinary mortals in history have decided that they understand God, but no one else does. It is not a humble thing. Quite the opposite. To understand the brain of God is to be God, and that does not differ from thinking you are Napoleon. It is insanity. On your last point, it is Christians who like to brag about how foolish they are. The rest of us are rather glad that we can use the organ inside our head in conjunction with the sense we have to come to conclusions about the world we live in. Reaching conclusions about invisible worlds known only to God, and of course, yourselves, is this same illness -- dementia.

Paul: Why do we answer you then, when it is clear you are not a reasonable man, a mocker and blasphemer? We answer for the sake of Truth and for the sakes of the many that need to and will hear these things in order to have their eyes opened to the empty and bitter arguments of frustrated atheists.

You had better define the terms you are using because they are not the normal definitions, though blasphemy, you can keep. It does not apply to me because I am not a believer in your God, and, if your God is indeed God, He is quite capable of punishing me Himself without people like you who think you are God doing it for him. A reasonable man begins with sensible things and from them, using logic, draws conclusions. You begin with the delusion that you know the truth and end up proving it, a somewhat circular, and utterly unreasonable approach to anything. Truth is not arbitrary, yet it is for you, and you just happen to be the ones who have it, you think. Opening anyone's eyes to this truth is the same as sticking your thumbs into their eyes and gouging them out. Everything you say is assumptions justified with ancient citations from faulty texts.

Paul: The great error you continue to commit here is that you do not differentiate between false religion and true. In other words, you do not distinguish between the inventions of men and the work of God. You look only at those who use the things of God for personal gain and thereby dismiss God. You should be dismissing the former and retaining the Latter, instead of rejecting Him and using the corruption of others as an excuse to justify you in your own sinfulness.

I do not distinguish between false and true religion because there is no such distinction, except in your own faulty assumptions. Religion pertains to some unnecessary salvation in a dream world. All of it is false, and requires belief in what is to be established, it is unreasonableness.

Paul: You see God as evil because you are evil. You lump His words and deeds together with lying, usurping institutions such as the Catholic Church, and call it all evil. But the gospels and teachings of the apostles are as day and light to the night and darkness of false religion. The false religious crucified Jesus Christ, but you identify Him with them, as though they are one, when they are diametrically opposed. You speak as a servant of darkness and confusion.

Assertion after assertion based on no evidence, and indeed utterly stupid, since you have no idea who or what I am, never having met me, and do not seem to understand what evil actually is, if you think you can apply it to someone you do not know. Evil is something that is cruel and immoral. On what grounds can you say that about me? It is all part of your delusions, on your habit of projecting on to others of your own faults, a well known psychological phenomenon. You say I am the servant of darkness and confusion because in fact you are. You believe in ghosts and fantasies, yet are intolerant and obnoxiously abusive to anyone who accepts reality. I said nothing about God being evil. I think God is your delusion, so how could I think that something that does not exist has properties? You are the ones who cited the bible itself to show that God was responsible for evil. If the Catholic Church is a lying institution then you are too because what we have about Christianity has come to us by way of the Catholic Church. For hundreds of years it was the only church, and could make Christianity in its own image. If that is what it did, then your brand of Christianity is the same. All of it is lies.

Paul: You write: “Christians always demand that their critics offer proof when they just believe with no proof except the delusion they call faith.”

You can argue that black is white, and you do, but it does not make it true. I have not yet read any of this proof that you say you offer. All you offer are tedious quotations from an ancient book written in countries that Christians are currently helping to destroy in their pious self-righteousness, and painfully boring personal testimonies that show suggestibility and a lack of discrimination. I am plainly deaf and blind to your ghosts and demons, but that is because I am a normal human being living in the real world. You should try it. I do not need to give you the substance of rational scientific belief in these pages because there are millions of pages written about it, millions of books, millions of scientific papers, not to mention the modern world you actually live in that uses it, like this computer you have conversations by. If these words impress fools, then you are among them as soon as you use anything like your computer, medicine, cars, aircraft, fertilizers, and so on. The fact is that you are hypocrites, and Jesus had something to say about you. Read it.

Paul: You also go on the offensive, dispelling the notion (not that we had it) that intelligent discourse with you is possible.

You say: “I too believed in Christ, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as a child, but I grew out of childish beliefs as I matured.”

"Whoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire (Mt 5:22 )". Projection! I am telling you that I too believed in Christ as a child! I am not saying you believed as a child, but I did. I grew up, you never did, rather you grew down, adopting childish beliefs as an adult, and you seem proud of it. Inform yourself.

Paul: Linking Christ to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy is plain silly. Must we spell it out? We will, not for your sake, but for those who may read this on our site, which we look forward to posting as Exhibit A of the total bankruptcy of reason, substance, good will and moral fortitude in rabid atheist attack dogs like yourself.

Thank you for your kind words, humble Christian.

Paul: Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are obvious fabrications and cannot be compared to an actual person Who lived and was seen by over 500 people after He was resurrected from the dead. Furthermore, these people had nothing personal to gain by declaring His resurrection, and much to lose. Many, in fact, lost their lives preaching Christ and testifying of what they had seen and heard from Him. After Jesus ascended to Heaven, He also returned, as further testified by these witnesses, on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, and filled them with His Spirit, to be with us forever. No one ever claimed to have been filled with the spirit of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and no one would care if they did. The history of the world does not center on either, but it does center on Jesus Christ.

Yes, what links Jesus Christ to Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy is that they all of them are purely imaginary bringers of gifts for good children. Whether a man who became known as Jesus Christ lived is immaterial to your belief about him. You boast that you believe, and that is what saves you, not that Jesus is a proven being in history. Or are you changing your tune, because it suits you temporarily? The evidence for this man does not differ from the evidence for Santa Claus. he lived too, according to some sources, probably more reliable than a fairy tale written, and it admits it, so that people will believe. If the stories in the New Testament are fiction, then why should anyone believe any of it, and where are these 500 witnesses you speak of. Why are gospels not written by the saints who rose from the dead? They really would have a tale to tell, wouldn't they? Did Luke interview any of them? Did Matthew interview any of the soldiers on guard by the tomb, he tells us about? The fact that someone could write a story is not evidence, except for people with terminal gullibility.

Paul: As popular as Christmas is, where do you find a book thousands of years old, written in blood by over 40 authors, each in agreement with all others, a book preserved by nations, predicting and describing Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, defended and preached by countless numbers, having laid down their lives to do so?

Try the Avesta, parts of which precede the New Testament by 1000 years, scholars say. As to 40 authors writing in blood, was the blood human? It is a disgusting thought meant to impress infants just like the notion of human cannibalism behind the Christian eucharist. If you were to sick up that wafer and find it had come up as blood and flesh, then you would be wise to seek medical attention.

Paul: Why are you so incensed by the testimony of Jesus Christ? Why do you ridicule the One Who laid down His life for you?

Jesus Christ wrote no testimonies, a bit suspiciously, you might imagine since he was supposed to be God. Nor has he laid down his life for me, has he? because only Christians get saved, I am led to believe, and I am not one.

Paul: The answer is that you hate God and would not have Him rule over you. You perceive no threat from Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but you are threatened by the One Who bought you with His blood, and you resist Him to your destruction as the son of darkness that you are. How foolish to mock the One Who died for you in order to deliver you from your wretched state, listing Him among the asinine creations of men!

First, I repeat I cannot hate what does not exist. Second, you just said this Christ had laid down his life for me, but now, in the next paragraph, you say he is threatening me, bought me with his blood as if I were a slave, and I will be destroyed for not accepting his bloody purchase. Aren't you just a bit confused?

Paul: Yet you say: “I have approached Christianity coolly and rationally. I have looked into it over a long period, taking everything into account, but using what modern scholarship has revealed to us....” Don’t flatter yourself. Your ability to process and assess the things of God is less than worthless. Men cannot know God in their own wisdom, no matter how cool or rational they think themselves to be (though you are neither):

“For the Word of the cross is foolishness to those being lost, but to us
being saved, it is the power of God. For it has been written, ‘I will
destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding
of the understanding ones.’ Where is the wise? Where the scribe? Where the lawyer of this world? Did God not make the wisdom of this world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save the ones believing” (1 Corinthians 1:18 -21 LITV).

Well, I have dealt with this. Paul wants you to be idiots so that you will believe his nonsense, and Lo! you choose to be idiots. If I were to believe in the bible as the word of God, I would have to believe God gave me this brain, as I have already said numerous times, and anyone who believes they are created by God should believe nothing less. God need not have given us brains at all, then we could not have sinned and could not have been wise, and everything would have been simple. If you are right, and there is a God, then He made us with brains, and He must have had a purpose in doing it. The only one that makes any sense is to stop people being fooled by charlatans like Paul of Tarsus, but your pride in being idiots lets you fall right into his trap, and all you have left is a foolish conviction you will be saved for doing what defies God, not what He desires.

Paul: The result of your “rational” analysis is that you list Jesus Christ with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Need we say more? To further illustrate how far removed from rationality and reality you are, I present your next quote:

Either your language is so sloppy as to be virtually useless, or you are a compulsive liar, or both. Here is what you actually did say about our testimonies:

You take it that I mean "you" personally when I mean "you" Christians generally, and that is pretty obvious from the context, though there is room for ambiguity for a careless reader.

Paul: Have you ever considered the psychology of your slipshod and twisted thinking? How can you, when you are deranged? You exhibit all those things of which you accuse us and others:

Projection, my friend.

Paul: You say: “You want to brag that your are different, well fine, but even if it is true, the outcome sounds to be the same bigoted, intolerant, know-nothings that born again Christians particularly show themselves to be.”

Yes, it only “sounds to be the same” in the malfunctioning mind of one who is intolerant and bigoted by his ungodly religion of atheism that centers on his corrupt powers of observation (truly, obfuscation). You have made a straw man out of man-made religious organizations formed under the banner of Christ, and apply your criticisms and condemnations of God and Christ to that. You write: “I repeat that those who are not brought up as "believers" rarely convert.” And I repeat, what you are referring to is a man-made religious creed and system. It is not the experience of authentic faith and a new nature in God through Jesus Christ. All of our posted testimonies (now eight) are of this latter kind, and not the former that you criticize as if solely representative of Christ. Our testimonies stand as a firm rebuttal to your condemnation, and in turn condemn you for speaking when you do not even know what it is that you are condemning.

That remains your delusion. Who would write a testimony of their pride in their conversion unless they believed it to be authentic. Every Christian convert believes it to be so. That is why they convert. And the statistical fact remains, despite your own cases, if true, most people are simply converting to something they have long ago accepted, often as children, sometimes out of peer influence, and sometimes out of a psychological hallucination, often called a mystical experience that usually has the symptoms of mental disorder. Your every paragraph betrays you bigotry, and so proves that you are not any different from your so-called "inauthentic faith". All of it is faith in nothing, yet this nothing makes you all think you are God.

Paul: Representative of your irresponsible habit of conjecturing, your statements are peppered with words that indicate your uncertainty. You say to me: “You sound as if you are rather desperately trying to convince yourself and offer these testimonies in evidence. It does not stop you from sounding like a ‘basket case’ in this correspondence.” I may “sound” that way to you, but my point is that I do not sound that way to others who know me better and who are far more closely aligned with your beliefs than mine. Your conclusions are strictly your own, with no corroboration or even agreement from those you would consider credible.

There is nothing uncertain about using the word "sound". I have to draw conclusions based on what you say, whence the word "sound". No doubt all your friends have a different view because they agree with the sounds that you utter. I do not, and, if I were to actually hear the sound of them, I still would not, as long as I am not in an asylum.

Paul: You are chockfull of irreconcilable contradictions. Here are more:

“To spell it out, some people can seem to be sane when they are mad. In my opinion, anyone who believes in invisible buddies are insane, but they can seem as sane as anyone else when they keep it to themselves.”

At present no one knows how this world got here. Why do you think it is made by an artificer? Why was it not born of a Goddess? Why has it not been here for eternity, and not made or born at all? You have no knowledge at all in saying a Creator made it. It is your empty belief based on what ancient people believed 3000 years ago. What prevents you from coming up with a better conjecture? Why are we stuck with your particular one? The reason is that your guess is tied in with a threat that obliges you to believe it, the threat that you have been making to me already in this exchange. Do not believe in this guess and you will be roasted forever in a boiling lake of sulphur. That you believe a good god can actually reserve a punishment like that shows your debased and irrational mentality. And are you saying that something actually existed that God used to make the universe? He did not actually make it out of nothingness? As I understand it, Christians believe God made the universe out of nothingness. How does that differ, especially as God is nothingness Himself? Genesis 1 mentions a formless void. Is that nothing? Then we find that there is water about which is divided to form the heavens. And the waters under the vault of the heavens is drawn together into a mass to be the earth. These explanations mean that God did not make the world out of nothing, but out of water. The bible is itself confused or ambiguous, yet it is God's word, you think. Well, I prefer what science suggests based on what we can see and test in the world we actually live in, as opposed to fantasy land.

Paul: After I explained to you how God has proven Himself in my life by His complete sovereignty over all things in every detail, you respond:

“Isn't that what they all say?”

My very next words, already sitting there in front of you, appropriately answer your question:

“You make absolute statements that are unprovable, which makes them inadmissible and useless.”

Well, if my statement is meant to be unproveable, it is only because you refuse to accept any proof at all. All Christians say God has come into their lives. They are obliged to say it to convince God that they deserve saving. There are what seem to be a million web pages saying the same thing. It is terrible confession of the fragility of human reason that people will convince themselves that they are dead unless they believe in something that does not exist except as a psychological feeling or illusion.

Paul: You deny that mankind needs salvation as spoken of in Scripture:

Try believing in it in the same way, and it will. If you have been involved in criminal activities before you were converted, then you can feel yourself blessed that you are not now doing them, if you are not. You have been saved from your own criminal tendencies. A lot more people do not need any such salvation because they are not criminals but were good citizens all along. If anyone ought to be saved, then they are the ones who should be.

Paul: Just because some use God as a cover to do what they want, which is a scam (and we don’t call it good), does not negate the expression of holiness of those doing what is good and right in Jesus Christ. The authors of the Bible testify of these things from first hand experience, while those who make church organizations such as the Catholic and Anglican churches are the ones perpetrating the scam.

It is strange that you all judge yourselves to be holy but the rest are not. That is what I have been saying. You decide that you are holy, when even on the basis of your own bible, God Himself is the judge, and you depend even then on His grace because God, being God can do as He likes and cannot be obliged to save anyone or He is not almighty. You take on the role of God in declaring yourselves blessed, holy, saved or whatever the appropriate jargon word is. You think you are God. Face the facts, that is not humble, and it is unlikely to impress any almighty being that has the role of God. But you all convince yourselves, notwithstanding the pious citation you began all this with, that God is an idiot, easily fooled by appropriate play acting.

Paul: You, in your perverse way, empower the false ones by giving them credit for the things of God. You acknowledge them in place of the True, which you deny exists. The True is the source of the Bible, while the false use the Bible to usurp the authority of God. In a perverse way you agree with the usurpers; that which consumes you rules you.

There you go again. "I am right, and the Catholics, the Episcopalians, atheists, everybody else are wrong!" You know what is true, and no one else does.

Paul: You go on about the scam: “The Christian scam is that you must believe a figure exactly as realistic as Santa Claus to live forever.”

The perverse notion you have of Christianity is no doubt influenced by your worship of false religion. The obviously sarcastic and stupid comparison you make between Jesus Christ and Santa Claus illuminates the nature of the error you have been taught and your gullibility born of intense bitterness, a hallmark of atheists. You wrongly perceive eternal life solely as quantity, when it is a matter of quality, which is not transferable to our corrupt natures. You erroneously see eternal life as something under our control by mental assent or agreement, rather than a change of nature by grace beyond our attainment. These are things you have been taught by false religion, known as Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV). This was your citation, and it clearly says that human beings just cannot be God, yet here you are declaring with all the authority of a Devil what God thinks. How do you know, especially as God has just desparaged human knowledge compared with His? God gave a law to the Jews. It seems a sensible thing to do, if you are a god, but he then abrogated it, because Paul and the Christians had a better idea. You can be saved just by having faith. That is Christian belief, and that is the scam. A law makes sense to regulate human society, but faith that you are saved and no one else is leads to brutality and criminal torture. Today is no better proof of it when pious fools like Bush and Blair can murder myriads of women and children in the name of God.

Paul: Knowing Jesus Christ is eternal life, not doctrine or mental belief. This reality comes by revelation and change of nature, something with which you are entirely unfamiliar. All you can do is deny what you have not experienced, and say it does not exist.

Here is the scam of Christianity. I have not had any need to change my nature. I am a normal human being living in a normal human society, relatively free until recently of much pressure to believe any of these scams. I have not mugged old ladies, buggered kids or raped women, and take a dim view of those who do, often Christians, or they claim to be Christians when they are caught. Nothing abnormal in my make up makes me need to feel saved from anything. If I understand you correctly, you began abnormal and remain abnormal, except that you now make a virtue out of it.

Paul: You say: “God...was responsible for all the wickedness of the Jewish scriptures that Christians purloined as their own and called the Old Testament.” You have not red as carefully as you brag you have. The Old Testament is a record of man’s wickedness. Do you think you are exempt?

I am a man, so, if this is true, then I plainly am not exempt, but God,
in the Jewish scriptures, instructed people, men like you and me, to do appalling things. The most appalling, in my view was his instruction to the Israelites that they could keep the young women, the girls, for themselves. Just what did that mean, O Mind of God? But there were plenty of conventionally wicked instructions like sacrificing animals and humans, murdering, genocide and so on, no doubt possible for your God but not for any that I would choose.

Paul: And did Christians purloin the Jewish Scriptures? The Christians who recorded the New Testament were Jews, except for Luke. True Christians, regardless of physical birth, are true Jews (Romans 2:29 ). Jesus Christ, as recorded by Pilate, is King of the Jews. It is all the record of God, to those who believe. To those like you who do not believe, nothing is pure, and even your mind and conscience is defiled (Titus 1:15 ). That is why you falsely accuse:

“Your gospel argument is called sophistry.”

“Sophistry: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.” You are trying to divine our motives, which means you “perceive intuitively or through some inexplicable perceptive powers.” You are operating in the realm of the unseen and that which is unverifiable by scientific method. You do believe in the spiritual realm after all, though you condemn us for speaking from it!

So Jews are not Jews because they were circumcised but because they felt circumcized in their hearts. and for centuries before that, following God's own instructions, Jews had believed they were Jews because they were circumcized. No doubt you will say, Paul's revision of God's own direct words takes precedent because it is later, but that again means you want to believe God is an idiot and not a bit almighty. God said circumcision was necessary to be saved then changed his mind. Anyone with a brain still in their head would think that an almighty, omnicient being would need only to lay down the law once, and that would be enough, but scallies intent on fooling the gullible would try to make out that the Almighty could be in error and want to change His mind. He was careful to try to impress upon Jews that He alone was the saviour, and that any prophet who prophesied what did not happen was false. Here was God Himself then, you say, coming along dressed up as a man to break His own rules, and appear as a prophet who says the world will end in a generation, and it is still here 80 generations later, obviously false yet elevated to be God Himself by Christians. You pick outy the bits of scripture that suit you utterly indiscrimanately, and claim it is coherent. Jews did not believe it, as you know, but you do. Congratulations. Another convert to the Truth.

Paul: So who is the one practicing sophistry here? You say God is imaginary, yet you tell me you understand better than I do what He is saying, because you believe His plain words. How can you believe them when you do not even believe He exists? Are you not the one displaying deceitful ingenuity? This is consistent with your hypocrisy, calling me on the things you do.

You are right, it is not sophistry, it is chicanery. I did not say I understood what God is saying. You said that. I said I can read the words in the gospels, they are plain enough and my reading of them is as good as yours. That is deceitful ingenuity illustrated in the paragraph in which you mention it. You are not just a hypocrite but a rogue, like all of your kind.

Paul: “'The first will be last and the last first' was what Christ meant by being humble. You think you are first!” More opinion and attempts at divination. You are batting zero, Mike. Because I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and speak on His authority does not mean I am making myself first. It means I have been granted to make Him first. But if by being last, I was made first, what is that to you? How do you know what He meant if He is fictitious?

Fiction is written in words, or had you not noticed, and the words of the fiction called Christ are written down in novels called the gospels. Maybe you have forgotten that, even supposing Christ existed, they did not have tape recorders in those days, and these words were written down by all scholarly opinion, even Christian opinion, 40 or more years after your Christ had been crucified. Whether Christ was historical or purely invented, his words are made up by the authors of Mark and John. So you are not following "the Lord Jesus Christ" at all but whatever the men who wrote it down wanted you to believe. They are written down as if this Christ said them but they are not what he said but what these "witnesses" thought he said or wanted him to have said. Some of these words were the ones I cited to you, and they plainly have a message, and it is the message repeated elsewhere that Christians have to be humble. You do not get it. OK. It does not bother me, but it ought to bother you.

Paul: Your very words and attitude label the Bible as an unreliable display of arrogance, written by men who recorded the words of God spoken by men! Knowing what one is talking about is not arrogance. Not knowing and presenting opinion as worthy or credible, as you do, is arrogance.

Opinion is a view not based on fact or evidence. The only evidence you have is ancient opinion written down in ancient books with no corroborating evidence. They are a genre called Hellenistic novels, not history. What are they if not the words of men written by men? Even if they are what God thought, they are written down by men with all the fallibility it involves. God does not speak, so they are vague feelings and impressions, and these vague feelings have to be written down as fiction, because they are not based on any fact. That is what you believe, and as you admit such opinion presented as worthy or credible is arrogance.

Paul: You do bring up some worthwhile questions:

“If men cannot be humble then why would God expect them to be humble. Is God asking what is impossible?” Yes; He is; of which Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God . When His incredulous disciples responded, “Who then can be saved?”

He said, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

So you say. It is an obvious interpolation into the original story. The author of these books realized that a camel could not go through the eye of a needle, and it meant what it plainly was meant to mean. Rich people could never get to heaven. But the first gentile Christians impressed some gullible rich people in Asia and Italy and did not want to stop them being Christians and milkable. Now Christianity is full of crooks and shysters, and you are proud to add yourself to them. How do we know that the phrase you highlight was added. It is because Christ condemns riches and exalts the poor in several places, not just there, although nothing could be more obvious. It shows that Christians began changing the holy word before it was even written down, and this is what you believe.

Paul: We did fail at being humble and at keeping the Law of God perfectly, as He requires. But that is not a problem for God:

“Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and exalt and honor the King of Heaven, all Whose works are truth and His ways judgment. And those who walk in pride He is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37 MKJV).

It is the grace of God that He humbles one. It was not by our strength or righteousness, of which we had neither, that we were made right with God, but by His through Jesus Christ.

I concur that this says God can humble you, but why did you need to cite Daniel, a known forgery written 400 (four hundred!) years after it pretends rather than the passage I offered to you, I do not know. the passage tells you that, according to the Christ of the gospels, those who are not humble will be humbled. You are not humble.

Paul: How does this apply to you? When God has humbled you to the point where you say, “It is true; I have been a fool, speaking in defense of lawlessness and sin because rejecting the One Who laid down His life for me,” then you will be at a starting point to begin to hear the Truth. Then you will begin to be emptied of yourself and vain philosophies and speculation, learning to live by every Word of God. As Jesus said, “It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4 MKJV). Which means you are not alive, Mike. You will find that there is no good thing in you, and what you cannot and could not do, He empowers you to do, as you look to Him. That is salvation, the great purpose of God in His appearing in Christ.

Except that I am alive, and have led an average life with little in the way of crime and obnoxiousness, and a lot of tolerance and regard for other people, but you despise everyone who will not accept your own brand of lunacy. And, if God did not want us to live except by words coming out of His imaginary mouth, why did He not create a real mouth that could speak for Him, clearly and for all time? He is an Almighty God isn't he? If Christ is it, why invent a half baked scheme that broke all the rules he had already said mankind should follow? And if Christ is God's living mouth, why do you ignore much of what the mouth says? And if God did not want us to live with or without these mysterious words emanating from an imaginary mouth, why did He breath life into us in the first place? Is God omniscient? He is? Then why bother with a life for sinners at all. He knows what they will do, and He knows what His judgement on them will be, so why bother? Another mystery of the idiot God, I suppose.

Paul: And how can these things happen to you unless you hear the Truth? So we are sent to preach for your sake. The Truth will stop your lies and, eventually, the liar who tells them.

Truth pertains to fact or reality not the inchoate emotions of unstable mentalities. Your truth is transparently false. It bears no relationship to fact or reality.

Paul: Lies such as this:

Jesus Christ never denied He was God. He affirmed it. You show us where He plainly denied He was God, and we will show you were He plainly affirmed it. Let’s start with His questioning the religious on how the Christ could be called David’s son, something to which you refer:

Mike: So, if he plainly denied it in one place and affirmed it in another, what is the truth? God told you repeatedly in Isaiah and elsewhere that he alone was the saviour. He told you how to distinguish true prophecy from false prophecy, as I said above, but you only want to read what Paul said, not what the man you imagine was God said.

Paul: “What do you think of Christ? Whose Son is He? They say to Him, David's. He said to them, How then does David by the Spirit call Him Lord, saying, ‘The LORD said to my Lord, Sit on My right until I make Your enemies Your footstool for Your feet?’ If David then calls Him Lord, how is He his son?” (Matthew 22:42-45 MKJV).

Jesus said that the Christ is much more than a son of man, though He was that too. The main point is that He (the Christ) is the Lord our God, just as Thomas said: “And Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28 EMTV) Jesus did not correct Thomas, as you claim He did or would. So where are you getting your information, Mike?

From the bible, my friend. It is the best way to argue with Christian, although it makes no difference because you all just pick and choose the bits you like, and just forget the rest. David (Psalms are assumed to be by David) addresses God speaking of his Lord, but the son of David could not be his Lord out of Jewish custom because a son calls his father Lord and not the reverse. As for Jesus not correcting Thomas, you depend on the author faithfully recording what was said. Was this author present and could he remember it as a true witness? You have already denied that he could, so he was recording hearsay, and even if he was trying to be honest, maybe the importance of the denial evaded him, or he was not told of it. Of course, you will not accept any such thoughts, because you believe that God could make something perfect on earth, first the perfect man, even though it was really Himself God, and then the perfect book accurately recording every truth you care to imagine. Jews, as you know, did not believe anything in the earth could be perfect, because the earth was imperfect itself, and made everything in it imperfect. Neither Christ, nor the bible, nor the Virgin Mary could be perfect if they were on earth. If God could have made it so for them, then he could have made it so for everyone. Why didn't He. Because He is the idiot God of the Christians?

Paul: But Jesus did say this about Who He was:

“Therefore I said to you that you shall die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24 MKJV).

Call Him whatever you will, the fact remains that if you do not believe on Him you are dead in your sins and will remain so until that changes.

Maybe, if I were obliged to believe a book written almost a century after this supposed messiah lived, and by a man who must have been in his dotage if he really were a witness to everything that went on, but few Christian scholars believe it was the same John. After such a length of time, the churches were writing down what they wanted people to believe, just as Luke admitted, and by then they wanted Christians to think that this Jewish martyr was a crucified God, like the other popular dying and rising gods of the Greeks and the Syrians.

Paul: You ask an interesting series of questions:

That is the approach of the false Christians and believers made by men, those who worship the Bible, not God. It is not cleverness so much as laboring under deceit. To such Jesus said:

It is that same John, writing in the first century about what happened almost ten decades earlier. Did you ever wonder how different the Christ of John is from the Christ of Mark, and even Matthew and Luke? I do not imagine you ever did?

Paul: We believe the Bible is true, containing the Essence of Truth, because we believe in Christ. This is called having “the horse in front of the cart.”

Is it true or does it merely have the essence of truth. The essence of truth is not sufficient because you do not know how true the essence of truth is. Nothing on earth, Jesus believed, as a Jew, could be perfect, and he did not think he was God in the synoptic gospels, and even denied it.

Paul: You say: “More and more of the bible is being exposed as false, but you will not accept it. You cannot. Your beliefs depend on it.” My beliefs come from God, not a book. You could get rid of every Bible in existence, but unless you can get rid of Him, you cannot destroy my faith or knowledge of Him one iota.

So where did your faith in Him come from? Was it that revelation you had, and, if it was, how did you know what the angel was talking about? Your belief comes from the book, and depends entirely on the book.

Paul: But you are also mistaken about the Bible; it is not being exposed as false at all. At every turn it is proven to be true. We challenge you to specifically show us otherwise. Again, give us substance. You need to expand your reading beyond that of ignorant, bigoted and bitter atheists, who carry a chip on their shoulders and look for any way to reject the Ultimate Authority, our Lord and Creator, propagating silly nonsense like evolution.

Hang on! You accept that in John's gospel the assumption is that Jesus is God and he even uses the expression "I am" repeatedly as an echo of the name of God. Yet he plainly denies he is God in the synoptic gospels (Mt 19:17). One of these gospels must be false! How can something and its opposite both be true? There are many such examples, but you ignore them all for the sake of your faith, and that is fine for you, no doubt, but it is dishonest in the real world. You teach lies and dishonesty. For my part, Matthew was written earlier by several decades than John, and is the more trustworthy, if we are to suppose a historical Jesus, and ignore the travesty of an inept ghost of inspiration. The Jesus of the synoptics did not pretend to be God, and no respectable Jew could have done, except maybe the Essenes, who considered their teacher a potential messiah. As for the Old Testament, most of it is forged, and nothing in it before Omri is confirmable as history. Just why does God want us to believe in myths as history? I put it to you that no almighty God could want us to do it, but dishnonest rogues who want to make money and get power over people out of religion -- that is priests, prophets, pastors and politicians -- will readily do whatever gullible dolts will accept, and so they have done throughout history. There is the old adage that no one ever lost money by underestimating the IQ of the people. It must have been invented by the Jewish temple priesthood.

Paul: And don’t tell us you do not get incensed when your postulations and theories are questioned, much less debunked. It is on account of your rage that you are a mad man, making outlandish and foolish statements and going so far as to even publish them on the net.

I sincerely hope you never actually met anyone angry. It will scare you. You do not seem to understand what rage is. By all accounts, I mean the bible again, God gets enraged, and it is usually with his best friends, not devils and demons.

Paul: Here is an example where you lump genuine faith with superstition and angel/devil worship: “All that false believe in angels and demons left us bereft of proper investigation into Nature for over a millennium and when people suffered misery despite their prayers.”

Was Calvin one of your true believers? Was Servetus? What was the difference between them, and why did Calvin have Servetus burnt to death? [We were thankful, with Mike's prodding, to have the opportunity to investigate and illuminate this matter, which you can read about at The Fruit of Cain Multiplied: The Murderer John Calvin.] Neither of them were Catholics. History proves you speak rubbish. You do the same with your heroes as you do with the bible, pick and choose. You demonize the Catholic Church even though all your beliefs come to us through the first centuries of Catholicism. The Church Fathers were Catholics. The Saints are Catholics. Protestants like Calvin were monsters, and Protestants burnt as many Catholics as witches as the Catholics burnt Protestants, all in the name of God. It is not a question of true faith or false faith, it is a question of whether Christianity is Satanic or not, and Satanic can mean supernaturally evil, or simply just naturally savage and immoral, whichever you like. As for angels and demons, I did not suggest that you worship them, but merely said you believe in them. You do, don't you? God is in your head, but Nature is the world you actually live in, and it has been spread over with blood and soot by you loving Christians as much as anyone else. So much for Christ and goodness.

Paul: In your willful ignorance you rant at the Hand that has fed you: “You are arrogant to propound failed nostrums. I accept what anyone intelligent today accepts -- biology, mathematics, physics, medicine, and so on. You stick to mythology, if you like but keep it to yourself.” All true knowledge is based on what God has made and revealed to men. Many scientists who plainly confess this are also ones you have accepted as “intelligent.” Why do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?

You are talking dribble. In thousands of years of biblical belief, the bible has not recorded anything revealed by God that has benefited mankind. Quite the opposite, God turned Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden as a punishment, him to toil by the sweat of his brow and her to suffer the pangs of childbirth. Nice loving, forgiving God. Then he invents a scheme of salvation for murderous cannibals, apparently forgetting that we had given up such practices. "Well it is only symbolic, just try it." "All right. It works, hallelujah!" No, it does not work, except for people with a walnut sized brain. What does work is our studying how nature works, with no reference to God at all. If God made Nature, He left it working of its own accord, and now there is no reason to think He did. Nature works fine. It is like those Startrek episodes where a world is found run by a computer, the inventers of it all long ago dead, but the computer faithfully going on repairing itself forever. There is no sign of God, but the computer is doing just fine, Maybe there never was a God! The computer called Nature IS God.

Paul: There are also many scientists who have no idea what they are talking about, like evolutionists, whose “theories” are utter madness, unsupported by one single solitary fact, let alone many, though they look high and low for proof. They find none because there is none. Read Theories of Evolution - The Vain Imaginations of Fools.

No you read the millions of scientific papers on every aspect of evolution you can imagine, not just your Discovery Institute insanities and falsehoods, but pages and uncountable pages of science. You would not recognize a fact if it hit you on the nose. You cannot stand facts. Anyone who does not accept scientific discoveries ought to stop spouting and start living honest lives with ancient ploughs, ancient medicines, and reject everything that science has given you. Evolution is part of it. It is not just a weird offshoot, as anyone genuinely good must be of mainstream Christianity, it is intimately part of it. You will, naturally be joining the Christian Science Church and refuse any medical care at all. Stem cells must be hellish to you, so you will carry a card saying "do not use any stem cells or anything to do with DNA or evolution to try to save me, if I am found dying". You really do talk through your hat. If you have all that false courage given to you by your false beliefs then you should take them to the logical conclusion. Cure illness by exorcism. That is what your hero did, and he is THE TRUTH.

Paul: Where would you be without the contributions of all those who have believed in God? And you call them arrogant in their belief? Just what great contribution to scientific understanding for the benefit of humanity have you made lately? You are a pipsqueak - a small, foolish man with a loud mouth who can do nothing but criticize without giving anyone anything of value. That is pathetic.

Well, you abandoned Judaism, but where would Christianity be without the Jews. Presumably you think it is better than Judaism, and whatever Jews believed became irrelevant when Jesus supposedly denied the law (something he did not do, but the Pauline Church did). The same is true of all those who believed in Christianity, once it became clear that God was a delusion. In any case, many, if not most of them believed in Christianity because they had no choice, or rather the choice of professing an insincere belief or being cruelly murdered, or left destitute to die slowly, at the very best. Many were English country parsons who used the church as a comfortable sinecure that gave them time to study. The monk, Mendel, who discovered the science of genetic variations, chose to be a monk for the same reason, so that he had time to study in his garden. When are you going to give up science as a Satanic distraction? You would never dream of it, and, if you did, you would never survive. Still, that should suit you because life is a wart on a tumescence on God's posterior, to you. If I am a pipsqueak, it is my own failures that caused it. I do not thank God or blame him, and pipsqeak or not, I need no false belief in salvation. I shall be content to die a pipsqueak and be humble enough to accept that I am not God's best chum.

Paul: What do you know or understand about nature, anyway? And what do the establishments of men that you idolize understand, truly? Johann Grander, an Austrian naturalist/scientist/inventor has discovered principles of water that the institutes of “higher learning” have not yet understood or acknowledged though observing them undeniable in results. They pooh-pooh his inventions while they are proven to work at many established businesses, like BMW or the Chinese railway system. Why do your scientist heroes “debunk” what works? Because they are also in darkness, just like you, protecting their knowledge at the cost of Truth.

Why don't you people with a direct line to God make the most amazing discoveries by revelation every minute of the day. You have never done it, and you cannot. All you can ever get are useless personal revelations. "There, there, Paul. Don't fret that you are a pipsqueak. I'll stand by you. Mike Magee will accept that he is a pipsqueak to make you feel better. There, there, little dolt, er, sorry, darling". If this wonderful Herr Grander has discovered sunbeams in icicles, then the corporate bosses of the world, many Christians, will be buying the rights so as to make moolah. Science is not a question of opinion, a fact that you cannot understand because everything you know is opinion. Science is public knowledge and can be publicly tested by anyone for its truth. If Herr Grander's discovery is any good, then it will be found to be. You are telling me it has been found to be crap. Scientists habitually try to debunk eveything. That is how science works. When things cannot be debunked then they do work. Get it? No holy word, no revelation, just practical testing.

Paul: Grander, not a religious man, credits God with his inventions. He says he has been led by God to discover what he has, so he can take no credit for what God has freely given to him.

And he is not religious? You really are gullible.

Paul: Has Santa Claus led anyone to discover or employ the secrets of nature?

Has Jesus Christ?

Paul: You posed this question in your previous letter: “It seems to a lot of us who do not share your delusions that Christianity is Satanic. How can you demonstrate conclusively to me that it is not?” After I answered, you indignantly declared: “Did I say I believed in Satan?” Did you not say, “Christianity is Satanic”? If you do not believe in the existence of Satan, why are you talking about him and attributing his characteristics to what we believe? If God and the devil are imaginary, then why do you argue about them at all? What is up with belligerently throwing out statements like this and then backing off, saying you do not believe in that which you brought up? Do you also argue with people who believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? Mike, are there more obvious manifestations of a damned fool?

You must be right, as ever. I argue about your cherished beliefs, but apparently in the Christian world that is being dastardly. I have to believe what you believe to argue with you. Well, when I use the word satanic myself, I use it to mean something cruelly terrible and immoral. I do not have to believe in Satan any more than I have to believe in Hercules to say, "The blues put in an Herculean effort but failed". I am using mythical qualities to describe something real. Why do I argue about God and Satan if they are imaginary? If this is a serious question, it shows that you are out of touch with reality. God is imaginary but awfully satanic things are done in His name and have been for at least the last 2000 years. God is not doing it, and neither is satan because neither exist, but when madmen believe they do exist, and only they have access to these gods, then the rest of us have to watch out. That is the plain and simple answer to a question that even a third grader would consider unnecessary. So far in history, believers in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Cklaus have caused no such trouble, maybe because mainly they are third graders. The trouble will start when adults with a third grade mentality believe in them. And you know what? They do! They just call them God and Jesus.

Paul: However, as I have told you, much of what you call Christianity is satanic, and has no more belief in God than you do. For them it is make-believe.

You say we make God out to be “the Idiot, because [He] is supposed to be almighty but he is not mighty enough to realize that you are not doing what he came down to earth to tell you.”

Well, the New Testament has a lot of stuff that God incarnate is supposed to have told you to do. I mean you Christians because we grown ups do not need to be told it. It is what we do to keep divilized. Among the things he said are to be poor and humble. You do not want to be humble as you have repeatedly shown, and neither do you want to be poor despite the fact that you will find it harder to get into heaven than a camel getting through the eye of a needle. You rest happy that God has no choice but to get you through that tiny eye, somehow or other. You are not humble enough to realise that it is God who will decide not you. This is according to your own beliefs, I hastily add, as Christians, but the bits you reject because it is too hard. Tough. You think God is an idiot and will not notice, but I am not a Christian and can see that you are deluded in your own belief. This incarnated God of yours never said it would be a simple matter of believing that would save you. He repeatedly said it was hard. The gate was narrow, the gate to hell was broad. Many would seek but few would find. Would seek, mind you. Not many would not seek and would not find, but even many of those who sought would not find. The Jewish God gave Jews a law, so that they knew whether they were righteous or not. They just checked off against the law what they wanted to do, and didn't do it, if it was not allowed. The teachings and deeds of Christ, are plainly meant to do the same thing for Christians. They abrogated the law, I repeat not Jesus, but then had to make it plain what was right and what was wrong, and the gospels supplied that need. Even Paul, who abrogated most things except faith, had to give out rules left, right and center, because the first Hellenized Jews and gentiles were doing as they liked. You refuse to do what he told you to do, not what Paul told you to do, but the man you say you consider to be God! You want to be saved without the trouble. That is why you treat your own God as an idiot. You hope He will not notice.

Paul: You say, “You have the sin of pride because you are sure you are ‘saved’. Sorry chum. It is not that easy. Read your bible. And who is it that you are raised up in to make your so proud? Are you sure that Christ of yours is the God your think?”

So you do as he said, then. You are indeed humble. You love your neighbour. You forgive transgressors. You call people fools and ingrates and whatever comes into your arrogant head. You can do just as you wish, but you all have this evangelical urge to spread your bogus nostrums to others, and in doing it you spread your intolerance and insensitivity, your warmongering and punitive attitude. How does it all match the pacific Galilean who would not carry a sword? Answer - it does not, but you are to do what I say, not what I do, in your brand of Christianity. If you have to love your neighbours, how can you be saved by faith and no love?

Paul: You read very carelessly, Mike. You think I called you Catholic but I never said anything of the sort. I only said that your attitude is no different than the popes, who also issue many proclamations that have no basis in reality, yet expect to be believed and cannot be reasoned into forsaking their lies and errors. While you do not claim to be infallible, you act that way, so what is the difference? You offer your views, which you say others can take or leave, but what about you changing your views when you are shown to be wrong?

If it were not so pathetic, it would be funny. I read carelessly? I did not think you called me a Catholic, I refuted your allegation that I was like a pope by pointing out that I had none of the powers a pope has, so your analogy was somewhat flawed. I do not claim infallibility, but I put forward my views based on what I have read and understood from various sources of evidence. It is not just opinion, or what is worse, revelation, based on nothing except some mental abberation. You and the readers can take it or leave it, but I maintain my evidence is sounder than your revelation. So far you have not shown me to be wrong on these matters of belief, and as long as reason demands evidence, you cannot. You have none, other than your psychological problem.

Paul: You read the Bible very carelessly.

You say: “I have read what the Christian God said and did in His incarnation, and that should be your own personal standard. As soon as you start judging others, you have had it. The Greeks said, 'Know thyself'. It is precisely what Christians never know.”

You illustrate perfectly your arrogance, and your predilection for psychological projection. You should read carefully yourself before you accuse others, but then that would be too humble for a Christian, especially one who is not a pipsqeak. The passage you speak of is not referring to infidels like me not removing beams from their eye before removing motes from their brothers'. In both the passages where this happens, the sermon on the mount in Matthew and in Luke's sermon on the plain, Jesus is addressing his followers and disciples. They are the brothers, not other people. They are the ones who have not to be hypocrites by offering up cures when they have not bothered to cure themselves. It seems that you are so engrossed in your own superiority that you are utterly incapable of understanding your own God. The reason is that you are not actually trying to learn anything from the gospels. You are like all modern day Christians, you already know you are saved, so you just look for citations to help you prove it. The trouble is that, by all the criteria, Christ offered, you are not saved, but you are too up yourself to realize it.

Paul: Your problems and criticisms of Paul’s teachings are all easily refuted and corrected. Your statements, as follows: “Paul said we should be submissive and obedient to authorities (eg Titus 3:1), but God in his incarnation overturned tables in the temple courtyard in defiance of the authorities. If Christ had obeyed Paul, he could not have done it. ” There is no authority but of God, and He (Christ) is the Ultimate Authority, therefore authorized to do what He deems necessary. The reason Christ overturned the tables was precisely because those who set up shop there had no authority to make the house of God a “house of merchandising”.

Where is your authority for saying this? The "merchants" were quite lawfully and rightfully in the courts because they exhanged the money brought by pilgrims from over the world for sacrificial animals and vice versa. What was illegal about this business? The temple depended on it, and it had gone on since the temple was established. In any case, if the "merchants" had no authority in Christ's opinion, but according to the authorities of the country, they had, are we to assume that Christians who dislike something can do as they like? Christ was demonstrating that the Christian can take the law into his own hands. That is what he must have done, and one reason why he was guilty of treason.

Paul: Jesus did indeed teach to obey those who are rightfully in authority. For example, He said: “Therefore render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's” (Luke 20:25 MKJV).

You and every other Christian I have ever read have got this absolutely wrong, and you are just too indoctrinated to get it. We are to believe that Jesus willingly puts Caesar on a par with God in matters Judaean. It is rubbish. Jesus will have thought Caesar was as subject to God as anyone else. You think about what he is saying. He is looking at a coin, with Caesar's head on it, a Judaean coin! Judaean! Judah is God's land and God's people lived in it. God was the rightful ruler of Judah, the land of His Chosen people, the Jews. Yet the coin showed Caesar as the ruler of Judaea . Do you get it? I doubt it, but Jesus was defying Caesar as NOT the rightful ruler of God's land. When he says render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, he plainly meant all the lands that Caesar rightfully ruled, BUT JUDAH WAS NOT AMONG THEM. Judah was God's. You will always believe what you like, but this saying which is one of the ones that must have struck a chord from the beginning as important, could obviously not be ignored by Roman Christians, and they did what they have been doing ever since. They devised a clever way out of the obvious meaning. It is not an excuse that would have convinced any native Jews, but the gentiles of the empire did not get the inference, and so it has remained since. Jesus was hanged for defying Caesar, and that is what he was doing in this innocent looking remark. By turning over the tables in the Temple court, he actually took the law into his own hands, and committed treason, in Roman eyes. He actively defied Roman authority, defied Caesar. That is why he was crucified.

Paul: Of those who abused their authority, such as the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus rebuked, He said: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. Therefore whatever they may say to you to observe, observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do” (Matthew 23:2-3 EMTV).

It seems to me that Jesus tells his followers to do what the Pharisees say, but not to do what they do. You Christians are the perfect parallel in modern times. You profess to follow Christ but you do not. You are exactly the same sort of hypocrites.

Paul: After Christ descended upon the apostles in Spirit, He made sure to let the religious authorities know that their mandate came from God, and that their allegiance was to Him rather than to those who tried to prohibit the preaching of God in His Name: “But answering, Peter and the apostles said, It is right to obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29 LITV).

Now, Peter tells them to defy the authorities again, in line with what Christ said about the coin with Caesar's image. But are these religious authorities the same as the Pharisees that they were told to obey. What was the message? It is plain that the early church has messed around with it to suit themselves, but they were unable to get rid of the already famous passage about Caesar.

Paul: You write:

Jesus taught the same. He said:

The reason Paul preached the same thing as the Lord Jesus Christ is because Paul was His servant and brother, filled with His Holy Spirit.

Look, you are the Christian, not me. You ought to know your bible. Any number of Christian sects and weird churches, in the US particularly, preach what they call "faith alone" based on Paul's teaching, and since the epistle of James seems to refute it, it must have been a serious argument at the start of Pauline Christianity. I accept that Paul is even more confused or confusing than the rest of the old book, but that is admitted by him as being because he taught whatever suited him and his audience at the time. Galatian 2:16 seems to say faith alone as succinctly as you will get, but doubtless there are other places. The argument was whether Jews had to obey the law, and Paul claimed the answer was no, because faith alone was sufficient, and he cited Abraham who had no law but retained his faith. Even so, he had to be circumcized and Paul opposed that too. Now, it is true that, as I have said, and you have cited to me long ago in this discussion, that Paul abrogated the law but still expected his Christian faith-led followers to obey the many rules that he laid down in its place. Above all, he says faith required love, and effectively he argues that love replaced the law. Not many Christians seem to know this, certainly not the "faith alone" bunch because they hate people more than any devil could, and you do not seem dissimilar. Your citations say that just believing in Christ will save you. James who knew Jesus as his brother said that faith without works was empty. That ought to be plain because the whole point of religion is to keep people civilized, and moral in society. If this moralizing principle is abandoned then the religion becomes useless in keeping people social and pleasant. That is just what has happened to Christians. They are intolerant of others and unpleasant to them.

Paul: You write:

Sophistry again. The citation you gave above is just what I am saying, so you cannot deny it. If professing Christ is not professing Christianity then the difference is too subtle for me. Is the Christian not a believer in Christ? Why is he called a Christian then? Faith in Christ is Christianity, at least for most people in the world, Christians or not. You obviously see a difference that will save you and condemn everyone else to the boiling sulphur.

Paul: Paul also did not teach that faith void of godliness would save anyone. The faith he talked about led to obedience and the upholding of the Law. As one of multitudinous examples, he said to the Romans: “Do we then make the Law void through faith? Let it not be! But we establish the Law” (Romans 3:31 MKJV).

In what way? He abrogated the law, so how did faith replace it. How do you remain righteous unless you have a standard of righteouness? What is the point of righteousness, if faith saves? I can see quite well that love can replace the whole of the law, but Christians do not love but hate. Look at some of your own words, and if you cannot see it there, turn to a few discussions on the web between atheists and Christians so-called, like yourself. And these intolerant hate dripping nutters think they are saved by the god of love. Delusion is hardly the right word for them.

Paul: Your problem is that you do not know this faith and the obedience that comes of it (not unlike so many who do profess faith). Here is Paul’s teaching on the faith of Christ: “But the righteousness of faith says this: ‘Do not say in your heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven?’ that is, to bring Christ down; or ‘Who shall descend into the deep?’; that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what does it say? ‘The Word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart’; that is, the Word of Faith which we proclaim; because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:6-9 MKJV).

It sounds terrific, but means nothing. Anyone, you included, can say, "I believe in my heart", but the question remains of how anyone is to know that you really do believe in your heart. Paul is quite explicit in Romans 13:8-10 that love is the same as the law, and love means doing the law, he even mentions the commandments, which is the cipher for the law of God in Christianity. Faith therefore requires love and hate is the opposite of love. Manifestations of hate, it follows, deprive the Christian of salvation. That is why James was quite strict that faith requires works. Works is often read as technically the law of Moses, but it means being righteous, the law only being the measure of it, just as love is. No one who sets out to bomb into fragments whole human populations can be saved can they? whatever degree of faith they have. Have you thought of spending long hours trying to convert Bush or Blair from their conviction that they are more godly according to how many Arab women and children, maybe even with the odd terrorist among them, they kill. You would do more good to direct all your effort to these Christian monsters, than to little old pipsqueak me.

Paul: It is evident that this faith is not a matter of Law-keeping, but of believing on Him Who saves us, which means we are made to be like Him, keeping the Law according to His ways and standards.

There you go again. The law IS His ways and standards, n'est ce pas? But you have to do it, whether you measure it by the law or by loving your neighbours.

Paul: “But now the revelation of Jesus Christ is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26 KJV).

So what is it that you have spent all this time telling me? You are expounding a doctrine. It might differ minisculely from that of other Christian sects, but it is a doctrine, and you do not realize it. You are seriously kookie.

Paul: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins!” (1 Corinthians 15:17 EMTV)

And on you go, giving citations you asked me for. It is easy to see how dimwitted Christians, eager to feel saved even though they are serial killers, rapists or pedophiles, go for the faith alone doctrine. Paul spent a lot of time expounding it, and reviling the law, but said not a lot about how love was necessary with it. That is why the world is full of fascist Christians.

Paul: You write:

"The significance of Christ being God is that His authority is absolute but all of you Pauline Christians mainly ignore Christ."

Let me recap then. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Do you remember this? God said it from his own mouth, at least the man you say is God, but happily ignore, called Christ. It is not the rich who have the kingdom or even those with a spirit of hatred, or faith, or anything else. You get the kingdom if you have a spirit of poverty. It means being content with very little, so that you do not exploit others, and do not spoil the land. The land, in those days before mechanized agriculture, was especially precious and could easily be overworked. Jews considered their land was God's land, not Caesar's, you will remember. I know Christ valued poverty and hated riches because he says so several times, and I know the land was precious to Jews, and still is which is why they felt able to steal if from people who had lived in it for the thoudand years or more, they were not much bothered about it. Moreover, it is common sense when the land is rather impoverished limestone outcrops, easily destroyed. Poverty helps us to live without making life miserable for others. How many Christians think they must be poor to be saved. Maybe a few monks and nuns. No one who is born again.

Paul: You write:

“A young man asked what he had to do to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Did Christ say just have faith? Read it. It is in the bible. It is God's own prescription for salvation, if Christ is God.”

You imply here that Paul would have told the young man that since he believed in Christ he was saved, and there is nothing more to do. A couple major things are wrong with your picture. First, what Jesus said to the young man was not a generic prescription for salvation. He told this person in particular what he lacked. When another rich man, Zacchaeus, sought out the Lord, not a word was said about selling all his goods. And when Zacchaeus said he would give away half his goods to the poor, which the Lord did not ask him to do, Jesus said that salvation had come to his house “this day.” Selling all he had was not required.

Sophistry. You have different answers for the different situations when it is plain that Christ could not have had any such confusing message, and in any case, the prescription still did not include having faith in him. So tell me, how do you know that this prescription given to the young man was just for him, and if it was, then why is it in God's word when it is of no further use to anyone, the young man having been dead for 2000 years. And this Zacchaeus story was meant to be taken seriously, when he had told another story just after the story of the rich young man, to illustrate his point, saying it was impossible for a rich man to enter heaven. Again it is an early Christian interpolation because Christians wanted to get rich Romans involved rather than just the poor! The Church wanted to do what Christ did not want, to convert rich people. Surely that matches your general hatred of Catholicism, after all, those early Churches became the Catholic Church. Christianity as taught by Christ was a church for poor people, and only poor people were saved. The message is plain enough when Christ says you need to get treasure in heaven, and when he tells other stories, Lazarus, the poor man at the gate, and the rich man who wanted to get treasure on earth but was destined to die and reap nothing in heaven despite his full barns here. It cannot be denied, but, you know what, nearly all Christians do deny it. They prefer self delusion.

Paul: Second, Paul also dealt with people as individuals, with different needs, and led them as the Lord gave him. So Paul would have done the very same thing as Jesus did with that individual, because it was Christ leading Paul, not Paul leading himself. Paul also did not give people free passes because they believed or said they believed. He required they behave responsibly and be worthy of the calling of faith in Christ. For example, of widows being taken care of by the believers, he said:

You are quite right, it does not, and that is why Paul is an hypocrite for preaching faith alone elsewhere. He gives rules and conditions and then says faith is sufficient. So, what actually is sufficient? You have said yourself that it is "believing on Him Who saves us" and salvation is "by the active faith of Christ operating in those who believe". That means to me that what matters is faith, and many millions of Christians evidently read it the same way inasmuch as it came from Paul. As I have noted, and you too, Paul actually sets other conditions in fact, but places no salvific necessity on them, whereas the instructions of Christ to the young rich man were quite specific. Christ is God, and Paul is all things to all men. Who am I likely to believe, if I claim to believe in God? When there is a contradiction or something unclear, surely I would appeal to God and not to Paul, yet you Paulist Christians ignore God and follow what Paul says even when it is manifestly not God's will, if that is what Christ expressed. Hypocrites, hypocrites, Christ's own words. You do not do as God says but what you prefer to do because it is a lot easier. Let us come back to our earlier exchange on Satan and Satanic. If Christ spoke God's words, and Paul told you to believe something else, then what is Paul in the Christian mythos? So as not to have to wait for another long tedious reply, I'll tell you. God's opponent traditionally is Satan, and even in the Jewish scriptures which make God responsible for all evil, he is God's chief prosecutor of humanity, the angel set up to tempt us. Either way, Paul is acting for Satan, according to your own sacred beliefs.

Paul: You are making things up as you go along to suit and support your God-denial. You find it convenient to do so by denouncing His servant, Paul the apostle, whom I wrote taught by personal revelation knowledge of Christ. You replied: “It is a revelation Paul claimed, by claiming he had received a vision. Any rogue or madman could make any such claim. Why is it necessary, when you have God's own words bound in the same book?” Many rogues do make claims, like Joseph Smith, for example. However, Paul’s revelation of Christ was supported from many aspects, and was far more than a single experience. What happened on the road to Damascus was only the beginning, not the extent of his experience of God. The preaching and teachings encompassing his full revelation came many years later. What transpired after God stopped Paul on his way to persecute the saints only proved that God had indeed apprehended him. A madman having hallucinations does not produce fruits such as Paul has.

Multitudes have been changed for the better (with us among them), as has the world, by the gospel he preached in Christ.

And multitudes have been incinerated while tied to a stake, and untold numbers have suffered deaths like being cooked alive in a sealed iron pan. People who did such monstrous things condemn the whole of the religion. They were not done just by one madman, but by the whole community of them. You will just blame it on to the Catholic Church, but the whole trouble with Christianity is that the same awful troubles keep arising, generation after generation. We are lucky to have lived for several centuries with the church relatively impotent, but cracked pots like you, and sixty million other fundamentalists in the USA being manipulated by neocons are putting the world in danger. And, as usual you are far too self-centeredly absorbed in your own salvation, whatever it means, making you blind to reality. Already tens of thousands have died in Iraq , out of Christian revenge for an attack by the madmen of another patriarchal religion. One madman, Paul has been followed by millions, and not just dipsticks sitting on poles like Indian fakirs. Quite frankly, Christianity is probably a symptom of insanity or neurosis at the least. That is what Freud thought.

Paul: For example, whose lives are being changed for the better by your teachings and who is talking about your thoughts, which, as you say, people can take or leave? But here we are talking about what Paul recorded for our sakes, things that bring life to those who believe, through the knowledge of God in Christ. The reason it has been necessary to have and preach this revelation of God in Christ is so that people will know God. A book is not enough, even a true Book inspired by God. All must know God firsthand to have life, just as Paul did.

Listen again. Isn't God an almighty being? If He had an important message why wouldn't He send it in a way that would impress upon people that this is God speaking, and not via a series of lunatics? God could create the universe and send a three mile deep flood, you seem to think, but the only people He sends as prophets are people like you, self appointed saints, who ought to be tied in a straitjacket in a psychiatrist's chair. I say this because you decide that you are sent, just as Paul decided he was sent, and your evidence is your personal vision. This is insanity, not prophecy.

Paul: You operate under the mistaken premise that Jesus Christ came to give us a creed and certain knowledge by which we could attain godliness. Neither He nor Paul nor we teach that though many without understanding do. If having people believe the Bible was sufficient for salvation, then we would be living in a very different and far better world, given the great number of people who claim to do so. But many of those who believe in the Bible are only trusting in themselves, not in God. Jesus rebuked those who thought to find life in the Bible while rejecting God’s coming in the flesh, in human beings:

Paul and John, that is all we get from you people. As I have said, John is the gospel most quoted by you Christians, and the reason is simple. I have already told you. It was written at least seventy and probably nearer a hundred years after the death of the man you call God. The church had time enough to depict Jesus as a madman himself, perpetually identifying himself with God, something blasphemous among Jews but which Jesus readily did all the time in John. Yet he did not in the earlier gospels. He was an entirely different man, not arrogant and full of himself as God almighty, albeit writ little, but humble and self effacing to such an extent that he would not use the word "I" at all, but referred to himself as "this son of man", a son of man being, would you believe, just a man! You say that Jesus is not a fairy tale character like Snow White or whatever, but you read the gospels as if they were fairy tales. If your religion is truly historical, based on real history, then you have to understand it in history and not in silken fairy tale cocoons. The church, in real time, wrote a novel and attributed it to John the apostle, a man who was probably long ago dead, and, if alive, had allegedly managed to survive being cooked in a barrel of boiling oil, and live on until he was a hundred.

Paul: As we read on, you reverse your first opinion that Paul preached salvation by faith without works to now saying that he taught salvation by works. You imply that the problem is Paul’s, but it is your opinion that keeps shifting and creating problems for you because you do not know what you are talking about.

You write: “Can we clarify something here? Is salvation by faith alone, or by obeying the catalogues of laws or rules that Paul lays down here and all over the place? I thought Paul abrogated the law of God, but then he makes up a whole lot of new ones while at the same time telling Christians they are saved by faith. I expect you can explain it away, but for anyone rational it is incoherent.”

Who says you are rational? That is only your opinion. The facts demonstrated here speak otherwise. That is because you are, as one who denies his Creator, a fool.

Many thanks. You should know.

Paul: I do not explain this matter away, but give a valid explanation that only does away with what is wrong and problematic in the first place. It reconciles what only appears contradictory to those who do not see the whole picture.

Paul taught these things, no different than Jesus, Who said that He came not to do away with, but to fulfill, the Law (Matthew 5:17). Jesus taught that the requirements of the Law were much higher than those of religious legalists, who knew the Bible, but did not know Him.

Only by the Spirit of God in Christ indwelling us can we know and fulfill the Law. Thus the need for His faith and grace.

The presence or absence of the fruits of faith is the way we can tell the true Christian from the false professor.

That is a lot of grand waffle, which amounts to this: You are only a good Christian when you live a good life. If you are a righteous man or woman then you will be saved, but not otherwise. And what is the sign of righteousness? For several hundred years, since Ezra brought the Law of Moses to the Jews, righteousness was measured by the law. Thereafter, according to Christ, who is also God, it was to be measured by whether you loved your fellow human beings. If you did not love them, and especially, if you did the opposite but harmed them, then you were not saved. The criterion of salvation is how you treat other people. It is a social criterion, because we are social beings, and destruction of society destroys our humanity. That is quite simple to understand, needs no law, or mystical faith and bodies of Christ, and all the rest of the waffle. It is perfectly simple, and for those who find it hard to follow, we have reinvented law to enforce it. So, faith in resurrected dead men is totally irrelevant. You have to be sociable to people, and not harm them, and if you do, then the law will punish you not God. He might want to punish you too, if you believe in Him, but for the rest of us, the dead and alive saviour and the law of Moses, Sharia law and the rest of the holy legislation is unnecessary. We have moved beyond it. You prefer to remain in the 2000 year old past.

Paul: As for Paul making up new laws, show us one. There is no such thing. He only explained and taught how the eternal Law of God applies to our lives. Returning to your obsession with sex, you continue trying to pawn off on Paul your own problem:

You have been pouring forth for many paragraphs the absolute understanding that you have of what God thinks, even though you started by citing a passage that tells you that you have and can have no idea how God thinks. You believe in this God, cite what purports to be His words everywhere then ignore them utterly. You are fond of calling me a fool, so what are you? You accuse me of making things up as I go along, but that is what you Christians always do, and with the conviction that anything you say, however absurd, or demonstratively false, is the truth because you said it, and Christ promised you that anything you said would be the wisdom of God. Such beliefs can only prove you are racked. Here you know that Jesus dispapproves of incest, puffs and cocksuckers, but you have only your belief that he was not one of these himself. We know of no marriage, so he was a single man, travelled around with a gang of men, yet there was a woman among them, allegedly a prostitute. Naturally, the novels written by the church for gentiles would not have matters like incest, homsexuality and adultery among them because even Romans were generally opposed to them. However debased you might consider Romans to have been, they gave rise to the basis of the law in most European countries, and Roman matrons were no more keen on adultery than any woman would be in societies where they were insecure without a husband. Roman men, unlike the earlier Greeks were not fond of homosexuality. But we have no idea what the practises were in Judaism. We know the law of Moses, but we also know that many people did not accept the law, and some sects were able to read the law in ways different from the Pharisees. Thus sex was a punishment for the disobedience of the primeval pair in the Garden of Eden, and particularly good men, like Jesus would eschew it. They identified with angels who were not sexual creatures, as Jesus explained. But the question is, did they count what you so graphically describe, as sex. As it was only between members of one sex, males, it was not sex. Sex was for procreation, but men could not procreate, whatever they did together in the absence of women. So, it is quite impossible to say whether Jesus was sincerely good, but still was a homosexual, in our terms. And an old manuscript has been found that implies he was. What for example, even in the bible was a young man doing fleeing naked from the Garden of Gethsemane ? So you spout on and on with your God given infinite knowledge, but all it amounts to is your own prejudices. If God thinks that homosexuality is a childish distraction and not a terrible crime, then you might not be so saved as you think for villifying people who do it. I repeat that what consenting people do in private is no concern for others, and no God could have made it a concern for others, when His main concern is keeping society civilized.

Paul: But do you think that you and others are not paying a high price for your fornications, sodomy and adultery? Think again! That is why you are called to repentance, as all are, for your own good. Not repenting, you destroy yourselves.

Why not try it, yourself. You talk like an old bigot.

Paul: Your characterization of Paul is absurd, sheer speculation. You have no proof for any of it. It is just more of your evil surmisings and popish statements. You falsely accuse one who exposes your sinfulness, manufacturing evidence against him where none exists, just like your Catholic cousins and other religious have done throughout the ages with the saints of God. You think your thoughts so important and worthy that you build a site to proudly broadcast them, not realizing how transparent you are in your jealousy and bad temper, which makes you irrational. You have no just cause to angrily dismiss Jesus Christ, the Lord God Almighty. All of that comes out in this dialogue, which is why we will post it on our site, with all of your words intact.

Here, for example, is a prime example of your illogical, illegitimate declarations:

You do not have to be a Christian to have a lawful marriage. God is God of all people. Those He brings together in marriage are in legitimate union, no matter what they believe. “Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put apart” (Mark 10:9 MKJV).

You take every sexual inference you can find because of the Christian obsession with sex, but do not take them in context. Again your utter misapprehension of Christ is painful. This saying was said as a parable. It was a parable of the joining together of God and his people the Jews who were depicted as God's betrothed, or His spouse, but often adulterous. The Jews had comuitted adultery by abandoning the rule of God and accepting Roman rule. Christ is saying very directly using Genesis as his metaphor of marriage, that no humans, even Romans, could separate what God has joined together. You are not reading your bible, you are taking in a load of traditional interpretations, the very ones formulated by the Church of Rome, when it was the only church, and though you now bleat against it, you are following exactly what it taught in the first place. You are the sucker.

Paul: Whether lawful or not, though, Paul was not trying to police those who did not believe:

It is amazing how you cite these passages, suitably chosen from various translations presumably to suit your argument, yet you cannot understand what you cite. You are too unselfcritical for that. You are wasting your time on me, someone outside the church that Paul tells you you have no right judging, yet you will not plainly and openly condemn people like G W Bush, the most powerful Christian, so-called, in the world, and a man who is getting Christianity hated for being a cruel, immoral, self-serving branch of the Republican party. If you want to follow Paul, and insist he is right, then why don't you do as he says. Condemn Bush. Condemn Blair. And do it loud enough for people to hear, then you might impress. It is because you still pick and choose what suits you, even when your real God, Paul, speaks.

Paul: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were teachable, Mike, and could admit to being wrong? But you prefer death, and death is what you have and sow.

You write:

"He said to the woman, I will greatly increase your sorrow and your conception; you shall bear sons in sorrow, and your desire shall be toward your husband; and he shall rule over you." Gen 3:16 LITV Then he sent them out of Eden. It sounds like a punishment to me, but then I do not have God's brain in my head as you do. As for personal distaste for sexuality, I cannot believe what I am reading. Paul is quite clear that virginity is the preferred state. He does not exclude marriage if people had the urge, but to remain unmarried was better. Paul, like Jesus, remained unmarried as far as we know, and he certainly had a thorn in his flesh, and admitted it. And when he asked God to take it away from him, the answer was: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness." Did you ever think God's power was perfected in weakness, boastful one? Obviously not because you persist in attacking the weak, and kow-towing to the rich and powerful.

Paul: In it you are the wisest of men. That is why I told you this truth that applies to you:

“The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless” (1 Corinthians 3:20 EMTV).

You responded: “So, 'The Lord knows the thoughts of morons to be useful' and you are attending to every word of an accepted moron. To praise foolishness is hardly something that God could do, is it?”

God does not praise your brand of foolishness, which you call wisdom. That is the precise point of the saying.

Here is the rest of the context: “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’; and again, ‘The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless’” (1 Corinthians 3:18 -20 EMTV).

Plainly we are getting nowhere on this one. You are convinced God wants you to be an idiot, and you treat God as one to prove it. Yet there is no getting away from the fact that you believe God gave you a brain because we were made in His image, and God is wise, yet you boast incessantly that Paul tells you not to use it, to become idiots for God. My reading of it is still that Paul is the agent of Satan, and you think God is, since He gave you the awful thinking organ in your head you are forbidden by Paul to use. And there you go projecting again, for Paul as Satan is greatly outthinking you lot.

Paul: You write:

Here is the description given by God of the natural dispositions of all men:

I thought you disapproved of Catholicism. This is original sin, isn't it? But I see no mention of queerdom. Did you miss it out by accident?

Paul: Homosexuality is just one more fruit of mankind’s perversity and crookedness that has led him to reject the goodness of God, and to be heedless of His Law and Person as recounted in Romans 1:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God has shown it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things made, both His eternal power and Divinity, so that they are without excuse. Because, having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for a likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and reptiles. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of the own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 1:18 -25 EMTV).

Where does it condemn hoomosexuality? Keep trying. You'll get there eventually. Citations are presumably Paul's substitute for a brain, meant to ensure you remain fools, according to his prescription. A lot more has been written since Paul's letters, you know, and a lot of it is interesting. A shame you missed it, but that's what is is when you become a tin man for God. How about a toy watch?

Paul: And is this a matter of no concern? To the fools of Sodom who are destroyed, it is not. Those who love God and their neighbors do not wish such destruction on others.

You write:

“You get more pathetic as you go on, Mr Cohen. Cohen by name, cohen by
nature, eh?”

Unfortunately you are too dim to understand my allusion, or you are no
Jew. Cohen is the Hebrew word for a priest not a Jew. I am referring to your predilection for the lies that traditionally go with priestcraft, your chosen calling, but you truly are a fool for God.

Paul: This you say: “Morals are a set of standards that people are encouraged to adopt because they are necessary for society to function. God has nothing to do with them, nor has elitist ideologies whether Nazi or Christian. Historically, it is hard to distinguish them.”

Mike, you say: “The Christian God advocated equality through the spirit of poorness. It was the poor who were blessed not the rich....There was no room in God's kingdom for a rich man.”

The poor whom Jesus said are blessed are the poor in spirit. How are they poor in spirit? They do not trust in themselves, their intellects, knowledge, powers and wealth of all kinds. Those who trust in any of these riches cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

This is plain baloney. You are again doing what you accuse me of doing in your perpetually projecting manner of argument, you are making it up to suit yourself, something that you Christians alway have done, and have to do. This expression "Poor in Spirit", is not without any context in the gospels. I have said before and it is as plain as day to any child, but not to you lot, that Christ valued the spiritual value of poverty. That is the meaning of poor in spirit, and it is a phrase met elsewhere in ancient works now that the Dead Sea Scrolls have been read. They also spoke of the poor in spirit, and they also called themselves The Poor Ones, and they also, like the Apostles of Acts, had no personal possessions except a few necessities. Your whole argument is a deluded personal justification of your own bigoted position. You have no wish and make no attempt to read the bible and learn from it. For you, it is a compilation of citations to be rolled out to replace thinking.

Paul: Only those who look to God alone are poor enough to enter His Kingdom. That explains how Zacchaeus, a rich man, was said by Jesus to have been visited by the salvation of God “this day.” It explains how other saints were rich in material things, such as Abraham, the father of all those in faith. Paul did not speak against wealth, only against trusting in wealth:

Well, bugger Paul. Read what your God said, dunce. Christ, the one you think is God acrually speaking from his own mouth was clear enough about it. You desperately turn back to Abraham, a man who in your mythology lived 2000 years BC, and was justified by faith in not having the law. Well, then he was justified by faith in not knowing that God actually condemned riches when He eventually turned up on earth, according to you. When He did that remarkable trick, He condemned riches in no uncertain words, and even the obvious interpolations of the Catholic church fathers do not detract from the message. The sermon on the mount begins with a catalogue of people who were blessed and it is obviously a list of the poor, meek and downtrodden. It mentions riches nowhere in these beatitudes, and you have pointed out that he said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. You fob it off with everything being possible for God, and that means that rich men can get into heaven, "thank God!" Well look at it again. It is possible for a magician like God, sure enough, but you are taking God's grace a bit far to expect Him to shrink you small enough to get through that "needle's eye" into heaven. The grace of God is God's grace, not yours or Paul's in Jewish and Christian core belief. God cannot be coerced, and He is saying here that a rich man will not get into heaven without God having an impossibly gracious day. Only self-serving fools can read it any other way.

Paul: Which also nullifies your lame claim that Paul and other true Christians preach against the lawful enjoyment of those things God has created, such as the sexual union of man and wife.

You write:

“The reason is evident. No one can get rich without someone else being deprived of the same amount of wealth.”

And you sound like a man rewriting God's Word. Suddenly you are reciting modern knowledge when you will not hear of evolution or scientific discoveries, but socialism, liberalism, economics, suddenly words God had to look into the future for are spouting out of your deceitful mouth. You might hate socialism, but I repeat that Christ held all his goods in common, and the man who held the purse was Judas. That is not just socialism, it is communism. "My God, that just will not do." God was a communist. Now you really expose your rightwing credentials. You want God to be a fascist like you. No doubt that is why you left Judaism.

Paul: You say: “The rich were exploiters of humanity's efforts, and they took to themself unnatural amounts of power. That is why Christ overturned tables. God was not rewarding the rich but the poor. The rich were rewarding themselves. Now, if you have not read this in your bible, whatever EMTV means, then I suggest you read a more conventional one.”

You can understand nothing much, my friend. The Christian Christ is obviously a fairy tale for the simple minded, but I do not doubt that it is based on a real figure in history. The trouble is that the real figure has been swamped by the Christian myth, and you are absolute proof of it. You just cannot comprehend it as history, and as you cannot, you cannot read it properly. You always read it with your inbuilt prejudices. It is a shame because the real story looks far more interesting than the fantastic Christian one, especially for a Jew, if that is what you are, or were.

Paul: Jesus Christ said why He overturned the tables and it does not agree with your communistic agenda. It did not have to do with commerce, but with what kind and where it was practiced; those who sought personal advantage used God to exploit others, bringing shame to His Name. He said to those whom He drove from the Temple of God :

“It is written, 'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46 EMTV).

You have already admitted that Luke was not a Jew and was not about at the time. He was not and could not have been a witness to the events, so the words he gives to Jesus 60 years later are meaningless. Indeed, they are probably the words that suit the incipient Catholic Church you Christian lovies seem to hate.

Paul: No doubt there are others who exploit people in various ways not good, and each receives a just recompense for their ways. That is the Law of God. You say, “Moses is a myth.” You think to explain what Jesus meant by the things He said, and how we have it all wrong, following Paul rather than Jesus, but, according to you, Jesus Christ believed in myths and propagated them, and even He was a myth, like the Tooth Fairy. So why do you bother telling us what He meant? You are totally confused and confounded.

Projection. I do not believe in fantasies but try to keep myself confined to what can be shown to be true. It does not stop me from using your own beliefs in discussing them with you, does it? Of course not, except for mindless dolts.

Paul: There is no doubt that Moses was real, because otherwise Christ would not have spoken of him to those that presumed to follow him:

Not only is Moses not a myth, but he is presently alive, as seen with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:30), because all the saints are alive in Him:

Well all this citing of ancient beliefs is no different from someone citing King Arthur, or the Greek myths. Your opinion of what Christ or Moses believed is not evidence, it is merely delusion. In history, a century of looking has found no evidence of Moses, even though he left Egypt with two million Jews and a large number of animals and goods and wandered in Sinai, settling in one place for almost forty years, according to his myth. Where has all that human and animal debris and detritus gone? It has gone nowhere because it was never there in the first place. Moses is a Jewish Aeneas. A founding myth written about 300 BC when Jerusalem was ruled by the Egyptian Greek kings. If Jesus believed Moses was real, then it is proof he was not God but was a human being who could believe false knowledge.

Paul: You state: “You implied above that I was the one who had the sexual problem, now you admit you had it, and think you are rid of it. Perhaps you get rid of it by attacking all those who are still enjoying it.”

Funny, I didn't notice I had admitted having a sexual problem, but you seem to be the doctor in these matters, so I had better bow to your God given wisdom.

Paul: You say: “Abortions that are not medically necessary, are the irresponsibility of people like Christians who force young women to hide their condition until it is too late.”

Well, I'm not keen on reality TV, and I am surprised you are, since you are so fond of unreality in every other respect. What I see on news items snd documentaries, though, are young women who are denied abortions by Christian doctors, and have to bear an unwanted child instead. Christian morality on this is among the worst there is. If you are a Christian, teach your children what you like, but when it comes to others suffering, you ought, according to you professed morality of love, want to help. Very often you do the opposite. You are hypocrites as ever.

Paul: You write:

Do you comprehend words? I have said I have not read your testimonies because they are too boring to take in. I read enough to realize what it was, and read no more. I have read it before, in not quite the same word order. And I have already explained that when I use the word "you", I am referring to you Christians, not you personally because I have not read your personal testimony. If you are among the minority of Christians who have actually stood out against the war, then I am happy to credit you with that, but actually I have read very little to presuade me that any Christians have dome much at all against it. The fellow you hate, the pope, has been mildly critical, and so has the archbishop of Canterbury , but whispered condemnations are hardly what is needed against Bush and his 60 million Christian morlocks. Incidentally, if I am wrong to link you with the morlocks, it is not because I am a liar. How could I be lying about you when I have not read whatever you had to say? But then reason and the meaning of words are particular difficulties of yours.

Paul: The reason we do not harp on such issues is because the issue is repentance for all from all of your sins, the main one being independence from God, whether the wrapper says “Atheist” or “Christian.” You are a hypocrite for condemning false Christians while doing all the things for which you condemn them and more. You also hate the true brethren of God, which makes you a murderer, and your ungodly rantings are poison to all who ingest them.

So, you do not condemn Bush after all. I should have known! Maybe you are right. I must be a fool. Anyway, we'll wait and see how many people get poisoned by my ungodly readings. We can already see how many people have been poisoned by Christianity.

Paul: While some protest abortion in the Name of Christ, you protest their protest in your own name, but do not see the hypocrisy of your ways. So are the ways of the proud hypocrite who is rich in himself, the very kind of person Jesus rebuked, as we do here.

Not so vacant friend. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, the Christians of the day, the believers in orthodox Judaism who considered themselves particularly godly. People just like you, poor dimwit.

A final note from Victor: Let it be clear that to us, this dialogue with you is not about power or cleverness. To us, right is might, and not the other way around, as with you. It is not about a smart aleck competition to see who argues better. We have offered you rational thought and expression, not limited to our opinion but backed with substance of logic, reason, knowledge, and a sound use of the Scriptures, quoting specifically. Thus far, all you have done is come up with inane opinion and reasonings, unable to substantiate them, or give any justification whatsoever.

Unfortunately, Victor, you do not differ a jot from your colleague. You continue to project your own faults on to me, a man you do not know, and who has done nothing more than to write you a few letters contradicting what you say. Where does "might" come into it. As for rational thought, etc, that is precisely what you have not offered. What you offer are 2000 year old citations pertinent to the Roman empire , not to what is happening today. You ignore that intervening 2000 years. The only time your friend got aroused to speak in modern terms was to condemn socialism, even though the apostles and Christ among them had been communists, as even the bible admits, and in fact, Peter even killed a couple of converts who had welched on putting all their money into the common pool. I am happy to imagine it was actually a metaphorical death by excommunication. But they took their socialism seriously, even though you now, because it suits your own bigotry, will deny God's Inerrant Word.

Victor: Having said that, while we have been blunt and strong with you, our purpose has not been to overcome or to humiliate you, but rather to expose the darkness that has overcome you, and which holds you in evident destruction and misery. Take it personally because you have personally embraced your foolishness, making you a fool (which, believe us, we have all been), but separate yourself, personally, from your personal darkness and we (indeed, God) will personally “dis-identify” you from your foolishness, for you will be no more a fool. You will have heeded wisdom; you will be pardoned and ready to enjoy life for the first time in your existence. And we will be right there rejoicing with you, thankful that darkness has not forever maintained its merciless power grip on you, wasting your entire sojourn here on earth, whether by false religion, false philosophy, irrationality, spiritual and psychological wounds and influences of the past, or any other thing. Satan’s death grip will have been broken. We won’t be the only ones rejoicing over and with you, Mike. As Jesus Christ, the One and Only Savior of all mankind, said:

“Even so, I say to you, There is joy among the angels of God, when one sinner is turned away from his wrongdoing” (Luke 15:10 BBE).

Ah well! I shall have to decline your generous offers because this darkness I live in is bright enough for me, but oddly enough, your alternative looks as dark and gloomy as a foggy London night in the blitz. So I decline the offer to be dis-identified, though I am sure you mean it well. I mildly object to being called a sinner, but I assume you simply mean the same as the word atheist by it, that I do not accept your salvation. If you mean other than that then you are making false judgements, something your incarnated God warned you about, but needless to say, you ignore. From the partial confessions of your colleague, I conclude I have no need of special treatment so far, having been an almost exemplary citizen. I am no lost sheep, but have been pretty well confined to the sheep pen, if that is what society is. That is what I would ask of other people. That is what the purpose of love is -- to be helpful to others in society to fit in properly and make the most of it. It is for our benefit. Would that you Christians would realize it, and stop setting yourself above the rest as an elite, or elect, if that is your preferred word. The purpose of Christ's lesson of blessing the Poor in Spirit, is that society is made up mainly of the poor. They suffer in earth, not the rich. God is on their side.

Meanwhile, all we can agree upon is that Nature is too good to spoil.

Best wishes,

Mike

Previous Correspondence with Mike Magee

Paul commented on Mike Magee's website:

Mike's reply:

Paul's reply:

Mike's reply (in black) within Paul's letter (in blue):

Paul's reply:

Mike's reply within Paul's reply (in blue):

Paul's reply:

Mike's reply within Paul's letter (in blue):

Click HERE to read our final reply to Mike.