Apart from being intentionally informative on the processes and thoughts behind the writing of DG3 this is a shameless advertising plug for the actual essay. Which you can read in Short Stories, it was posted 13 Aug. Parts One and Two are also available from my profile.

Why?

A question that I get asked very often, and one that constantly surprises me, is: 'Why are you so fascinated by religion, you don't even believe in god!'

'I think, therefore, I am' almost always trips through my subconscious before my lips, larynx and tongue collaborate to talk on the foundations of this culture, built on two thousand years of religious rule, law and social imprinting. Religious cultures by their very nature are masters of shaping the developing mind.

Which is why, if you ever do get to think: 'Who am I?' or 'What am I?' addressing the role of religion through history is vital. It is surprising the number of blank looks I get when forming this answer. Obviously wondering who or what we are isn't that common a question to the human mind. Maybe people already think they know.

These essays are in part the result of this minds quest to not just know whether I have faith, or not. But to know why.

In knowing the 'why' the key questions seem obvious: 'Were we created by a supernatural god?' If not: 'how?' 'Is the Old Testament really the word and stories of god and his people?', 'Is Jesus really the son of the Old Testament god?' if not: 'who the hell is god?' and: 'how come we have Christianity?'

And so we have the major themes for these essays.

Confirming Belief

One might say that 'Dear God', especially part three, simply confirms my own belief. That I have told a story that I want you to read and believe yourself. That is of course true to some degree. But I have come to this story through a great deal of deliberation and questing. The path traced during these essays of the questing mind, is a path this mind has trodden.

As a young man I had a firm belief that modern Christianity did not in anyway represent me as a human. But I had great capacity for a belief in god, just no religion that seemed viably to match up with my expectations of a god.

Having never been capable of blind faith, I could no more blindly discount religion than I could accept it. These essays then, simply represent what I have come to believe.

The Beatitudes

It is interesting to me just how much faith people seem to have in Christianity in the face of almost insurmountable evidence negating its validity. I think maybe it is the human minds need for faith. Surely there is faith to be had in knowing a real truth rather than grasping onto what we hoped might be true?

One of the comments to DG3 tended to agree with key elements of the essay but then sited the 'beatitudes' as being the ideal representation of Christianity.

The beatitudes for anyone not in the know essentially describe gods vision of the perfect citizen. We see Jesus detailing them in Matthews sermon on the mount, in some part via Lukes gospel, obviously they are quoted in later Church liturgies and importantly we have them in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which pre-date Jesus and Christianity.

The beatitudes categorises those that god will look favourably on: the poor, mourners, the hungry, the persecuted, the meek, the merciful, pure of heart and peacemakers.

Ignoring the fact that god seems to have lost interest in caring for those that fit that bill, we should look at how Jesus came to be preaching them.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a recent find (last century) of ancient Jewish texts that include the books we know in the Old Testament. Analysis of additional scrolls found at the time reveal they were maintained by a people from the northern territories of ancient Palestine. These people had grown disillusioned with orthodox Judaism and over a period of time formed new ideas about god that included the apocalyptic message and some of the beatitudes.

The Jewish man Jesus, born and bred in the northern city Nazareth would very likely have been raised to believe these new concepts as a religious truth. It is probably how the Jewish Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth later came to preach the forthcoming apocalypse and the beatitudes amongst other things. Was Jesus Christian? Absolutely not, for reasons explained in DG3. Are the beatitudes a definition of gods ideal Christian? No, they are Jewish concepts later adopted and shaped by Christians. Does this god even exist? No, why not is explained in DG2.

While it seems half of America still waits in expectation of the apocalypse, most, including the modern orthodox Church gave up on the apocalypse almost two millennia ago - simply amending god gathering his faithful into his eternal kingdom at the final reckoning to life after death.

Equally the beatitudes are a great bit of marketing by the early Christian Church that still works well today - don't worry if you are poor, hungry, meek, persecuted etc. It simply means you are one of gods chosen. Great, I have to die before life starts getting better!

Of course the beatitudes leave little room for the modern masses of western Christians who almost to the man, women and led child, fail to meet any of the beatitude criteria.

On Dawkins

It is occasionally said to me, that I must have swallowed Richard Dawkins 'God Delusion' hook, line, chapter and verse. To which I respond: 'You obviously haven't even opened it!'

My subconscious then trips through the bibliography that helped form this conscious opinion while they go onto question why I am so fascinated by religion. As a matter of interest the bibliography includes: The Bible (Readers Digest condensed and illustrated version, Revised Standard Version and via SwordSearcher – digitally as reference - every English translation of the Bible since and including Wycliffe and Tyndale).

Bart Ehrman's 'The Apocolyptic Jesus, Luke Timothy Johnson's 'An interpretation of the New Testament', Bart Ehrman's 'Historical Introduction to the New Testament', Tom Wright's 'What St. Paul Really Said', Bart Ehrman's 'Lost Christianities', Richard Dawkins 'The Blind Watchmaker', Richard Dawkins 'The Ancestors Tale'.

'A beginners guide to genetics' by Suzuki and Cullis after I got half way through the Blind Watchmaker and realised I didn't understand. And in my continuing quest consumed John Searle's 'The Mystery of the Consciousness', Sam Harris' 'Letter to a Christian Nation' and 'The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason'.

I think, therefore, I am.

Anyone that thinks the 'God Delusion' is about Christianity is mistaken, it is about the psychology of faith in a god and it covers a wide spectrum of thought. Unfortunately, with a grand stage open to him Dawkins for some reason just dismisses the bible in a few pages and that is it. That really bugged me. Surely if this questing mind could discover the origins of life, self and Christianity with the help of Amazon, he could take the time to tell everyone how the Bible really came to be.

With this eating away in the back of my mind I was reading Focus about two months ago when I happened upon an interview with Dawkins. It was a interesting interview which ended with a clever angle. The interviewer eventually built up the courage to ask Dawkins: 'If god was discovered to be real, what would you ask him?'

I thought that was a brilliant question and Dawkins response was up to the challenge. These were both then tossed into the mixing pot of my mind alongside the disappointment at his missed opportunity in looking at the history of the Bible. Together they formed the basic concept for these dialogues but I still didn't know that I was going to write them.

A few weeks later Prideesh and I were standing around my parents dinner table chatting about life, god and golf when I noticed a book sat askew on the counter: 'Conversations with God' by Neale Donald Walsch. I picked it up, read the first two pages and the floodgates opened. Suddenly I was hearing my own dialogues in my head. Prideesh and I came home and I started writing 'Dear God – One' the very next night.

On Writing 'Dear God'

The first essay: evolution, literally spilled onto the page. I think it was the easiest because evolution and genetics are very widely written about and discussed with the average layman in mind.

The second essay: The Old Testament, took a little more work but that was not so much in finding what I wanted to say, but in actually saying it within the platform of these dialogues.

The third: Christianity, took seven weeks and five major re-edits. Writing 'Dear God – Three' (DG3) was the most difficult writing challenge this mind has so far attempted.

One of the key pluses for the first two essays was the humour. While not actually being hugely funny it did break up the dialogue, gave the reader a moment to pause, collect their thoughts and move on - it freshened the mind's palette and made the whole thing a lot easier to digest. Finding any way of putting humour into DG3 was hugely problematic because someone or something always needs to be the focus for the humour.

In the first two of these, especially the first it was easy. The questing mind really didn't have a clue and some fun could be had. Likewise there were a few jokes to be had on the culture, perception and of course 'you're really god!' front.

In DG3 it was important that the questing mind was perceived to be catching on, and almost on the same page as god. Humour through god was also difficult because it had been so thoroughly done in the first two and would have needed a dumbing back down and repetition. That left the only avenue for humour in Christianity itself which was totally out of the question, it would have ruined the impact of the message and alienated anyone with the slightest perception of faith.

My personal thoughts on Christianity probably impacted as well. Keeping the dialogue even handed was not difficult but I carry some resentment for the moral guilt it placed upon my adolescent and young adult mind – and made humour in the writing of DG3 hard to come by.

Another problem was the length. There were so many avenues that could have been discussed that the first draft was well over 10,000 words - that's 4,000 words of really interesting dialogue about the founding of the orthodox Church, and the coming together of the New Testament that currently sits calling to me in several disparate openOffice documents. It may become part four, am not sure – I want to get these conversations out of my head and finished!

Prideesh read the 10,000 word version twice (now that is devotion). She said: it made sense but was bookish, that it needed to be a lot shorter, and should focus on one aspect. She was right. We decided that it would need to stick very closely to just the story of how Christianity came to be, why Jesus became known as the messiah and no deviations. We also decided that the story had to be in the one essay not split into two. So another two weeks later we had the 7,500 word edition.

Once the core story was there the job was to go through the text and remove or re-word anything that confused. Once more Prideesh was excellent here and got me to remove a large chunk I had written on scholastic methods for textual comparison and dating (almost 1000 words!) which included a discussion on how George Orwel's 1984 might accurately be placed and dated by no means other than textual comparison and historical reference. It was apparently interesting but too much extra information. Painful to remove but Prideesh, as usual, was right.

Another area that got trimmed down was in demonstrating the differences in the gospels and the made up stories in attempting to manifest Jesus the messiah. The point was made with just those in the nativity and the beginning of Matthews gospel, so the others I had were trimmed out. Another painful process.

Eventually I had the text, down now to 6,000 words, and just needed to balance the dialogue between the questing mind and god. This was difficult but also one of the most rewarding. One of the secondary objectives for this was to really try and influence a readers thoughts on character or plot simply through dialogue. It is something you can probably just keep revising. So in the end I had to stop tweaking.

The last few edits were done by Prideesh and I reading DG3 out as if it were a play, which was great fun. It all made perfect sense to us.

There have been some comments that at times the dialogue confuses the god and the questing mind, almost as if they switch. This is actually intentional. I have reread this a couple more times (which was difficult as I have been looking at it for so long now I can barely bring myself to read a word of it) and it functions as I wanted, maybe just not as cleverly as I hoped. You are supposed to think that the roles reversed, it is meant to stick in your mind because it gets pay-off in the last part.

I hope you will drop by to read the last part when it gets posted.

Whatever your thoughts of these essays they represent a considerable personal milestone, I think as much in just getting my thoughts on religion and self out of my head. Personal accomplishment is rarely accomplished alone. As such huge thanks to the special one: Prideesh.