Hi everyone. I'd like to thank all the angry born again Christians who have been writing to tell me how much they're looking forward to my eternal torment in the flames of Hell. It's nice to know that I'm in your prayers. And you are rubbing your hands with gleeful anticipation, too, some of you, by the sounds of it, when you're not furiously typing pages and pages of scripture. And yet, if I call you crazy, apparently I'm the one who's being offensive. It's a funny old world, isn't it? To be fair, I do actually sympathise to some extent. I mean it must be quite galling for religious people to see atheists like me going about their business without a shred of guilt or self-loathing, and not in the least inclined to pray or to do penance of any kind, and not in the slightest bit worried about any form of eternal punishment. I have to admit if I was religious I'd probably think to myself: "How come I've got all this weight on my shoulders while these bums are getting a free ride?" And I don't even think that I'd be comforted, either, as some of you clearly are, by the prospect of their eternal torture in the flames of Hell, roasting in agony and tormented by demons, because I don't really buy that scenario. I think if Hell does exist, it's probably not a place where you physically burn forever, but perhaps a metaphor for something more subtle that consumes from within. Something like eternal regret, perhaps. Something not done, not challenged, not risked, not loved enough. Or maybe it's just burning in fire. I don't want to get heavy about it. It's bad enough that Jesus died for my sins - I still haven't really gotten over that - and thanks for reminding me about that yet again, by the way. I do feel somewhat guilty that I'm not more grateful to Jesus, but I just wish he had taken the trouble to ask me before he went ahead with it, because now I feel that I'm being billed for something that I didn't order. And that really is the deal, isn't it? If you're a Christian you're born already in debt to Jesus, and it's a debt that you can only repay in full by dying. That's some deal you've got yourself into there. That's like being asked to pay off the mortgage on a house that you already own, especially as there's no hard historical evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels even existed. What records we do have were written by people who were born long after he died. So they were just really passing on what they had heard. And, of course, the same is true of the Gospels themselves. Curious, isn't it, that nobody who was actually writing anything down at the time appears to have known anything about Jesus, despite the fantastic miracles he was performing, the multitudes he was preaching to, and of course his momentous and spectacular public demise. And don't forget this is a guy whose birth was marked by a celestial event, who was born by a miracle to a virgin in the year 6 BC. Two miracles for the price of one (talk about hit the ground running) and then it was one miracle after another, fed the multitude, healed the sick, walked on water, raised the dead. He was nailed to a plank and he came back to life again. How can nobody have heard of him? He should have been the talk of the desert. He should have been as famous as Elvis. And yet all we've got is hearsay, second and third hand accounts which have been doctored and edited and translated through a hedge backwards so many times that the truth no longer even bears any resemblance to itself, if it ever did. So I don't know who you think you're praying to, but it doesn't seem to have done you much good, does it? Maybe you should try praying to Elvis for a while. See how that works out. I mean at least we know that Elvis actually existed. But just because Jesus is a story book character, that doesn't mean he's not a good character. It doesn't mean he hasn't got wisdom to impart. Didn't he say: "The kingdom of Heaven is within"? Luke 17, verse 21, I think it was. And what a useful piece of information that is when you think about it. I realise that, as an angry Christian, you probably pay lip service to those words, but you don't really believe them. And so, for you, it doesn't really happen. And clearly it hasn't happened, otherwise you wouldn't be so angry, would you? Turn the other cheeks, forgive trespasses, love your enemy? That's a foreign language to you. No, you wan't punishment, don't you? You want eternal torture. You want unimaginable suffering, for your own satisfaction. So I think it's probably just as well that Jesus didn't exist, because if he came back and he saw what people like you have made of his teachings, he'd quickly realise that nobody had listened to a word he said, that he was wasting his breath, and that he wasted his life. Oh well, we've all got our cross to bear. Peace to everyone, especially Christians, both inside and outside the kingdom of Heaven.