Jesus Christ is Alive! I used to be an atheist but realised I had no real purpose in life and nothing that the world offered could fill that spiritual vacuum I felt inside. One day realising that everything the world offered was empty and only of fleeting interest. I humbled myself and repented and invited Jesus into my life. At the moment I said the believer’s prayer I knew that Jesus was alive as I experienced the power and love of his Holy Spirit. That was in 1979 nothing since then has convinced me otherwise than that was the best decision I ever made in my life to become a born again Christian and know the love, joy and power of God's Holy Spirit. I found a living faith that I didn't deserve. It was by God's Grace alone that saved a wretch like me.

I pray than one day when you stopped following the fool Dawkins that you to will find Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Saviour. I am certain that Jesus Christ is alive. I have witnessed many instances where I have seen God's power at work including the miraculous healing of my brother Danny when he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and given only weeks to live. That also was in 1979. My brother was miraculously healed by the power of prayer. He is still alive and well 30 years later. The bottom line is that I have lived a life without God and found it to be empty. But I have had the humility to believe in Jesus Christ as the messiah, the saviour of the world and found it to be true. Every time I pray I feel his presence and his amazing love. All the money and power in this world cannot compare than having a personal faith in Jesus Christ.

I hope one day that all you who persecute and ridicule Christians will one day have a Saul experience and be touched by the power of the Holy Spirit on your own Road to Demascus( see the book of Acts) and realise how wrong you have been and start to follow Jesus rather than the false empty wisdom of the aggressive atheist . Seek and you will find Jesus is Alive

As it's Sunday a line from Andrew Marr suddenly struck me, we the British are hostile to taking anything, even the meaning of life, too seriously. This wan't meant as a criticism, but as something positive, something commendable, something to be proud of, a shining characteristic of Britishness.

But couldn't one argue that this means we are profoundly shallow and superficial. That nothing really matters to us, that nothing has real worth anymore? Or is it that the only thing that we take seriously is our right to take nothing too seriously? Is life but a joke, not to be taken seriously? Maybe it is? We can distance ourselves from reality by presenting a ironic face and distance to it. It's a way of avoiding real egagement and responsibility for our actions, because, after all we weren't really serious.

A heart are we merely amoral and hollow? Unfeeling husks masquerading as human beings?

What about life and death? Are we the kind of people who don't take life and death too seriously? Because to be really, authentically British means we don't take anything too seriously?

Is this really something to be proud of? That we don't take anything too seriously? Or should we really be deeply ashamed that we have so littlle understanding that we take nothing too seriously?

Is that the reason why we went to war against Iraq so easily, because we no longer take anything too seriously? We no longer take war and mass destruction too seriously? But should we take some things seriously? Isn't life and death too important not to be taken seriously? Can one really have a kind of ironic distance to mass murder and mass destruction? Is it because we are the ones doing the killing that we can afford to not take anything too seriously, because it's not our children and loved ones that are being ripped apart by bombs and bullets?

Clealy I'm taking Andrew Marr's words seriously, very seriously. He is an influential media actor, and he appears so shallow, so full of himself, so lacking in empathy for the suffering of others, so isolated from the consequences of our actions. A million and half dead Iraqis and destroyed nation, but don't lose sleep over it, it the essence of being British to moderate the loss away, the dead don't really bother us too much, because we don't take anything too seriously.

Can I just speak up for the “True” atheist here. There is no such thing as an atheist “belief”. An atheist does not believe in anything whether it be religion, politics, science or anything else. People who “believe” there is no god are agnostic. It is not a question of belief for an atheist, it is a knowledge based on logic.

Dear Lowfidelity,

You clearly don't agree with Andrew Marr. You wrote that, 'Britishness' certainly doesn't mean that we don't take anything seriously, and he wrote the opposite. He may not have meant what he said, or meant something else, or doesn't know what he's on about, but, that is what he wrote. I'm not making it up.

I'm aware that the subject of the piece wasn't 'Britishness'. I've written about what I think of the rest of it. But Andrew Marr is an influential, establisment, journalist , writing a rather glib piece about God/religion, and one has to assume he gave some thought to his choice of words and what they mean. I'm not inventing what he said. Andrew Marr wrote that the "British are hostile to taking anything too seriously, even the meaning of life." This may be an attempt at irony, on the other hand, he obviously believe he's got a point. That his words have meaning, otherwise why bother to write anything at all about this subject?

I was speculating about whether his statement about not taking anything too seriously applied to wars of mass destruction leading to massive loss of life in, for example, Iraq? I wondered if it might be true, in a strange sort of way. Judging by the muted response to Tony Blair's participation in warcrimes, I believe there's some validity to my argument.

One can of course assume that Andrew Marr just knocked off this article in a tick and didn't mean half of what he said. This is quite possible. But he did write what he wrote. I'm not putting words in his mouth. Have I distorted what he said? Have I taken a simple remark and blown it out of all proportion? Perhaps.

I just wondered if this kind of thinking and attitude applied in a wider context. Perhaps he really means that the British don't take anything too seriously, and that this is a positive quality and characteristic the British have, in contrast to for example, Muslims! Dreaded Muslims again. Compared to us these buggers seem to really take things too seriously and get worked up about 'things'. They actually get upset when we invade their countries, detroy their cities, and slaughter their people, funny lot! Why can't they be more like us? When are cities were being destroyed by the Nazi Luftwaffe we just shrugged, make a joke and put the kettle on! My these Muslims have lot to learn about warfare!

I think his comments about Muslims, who he seems to lump together in one big pack, are outrageous. His 'analysis' about the nature of the occupation of Iraq by western forces is establishment propaganda.
We are rational and moderate and they are raving fanatics, hundreds of years behind us on the scale of development. This is the establishment line, one that's been around for centuries in one form or another, so maybe we aren't as 'advanced' as we like to think we are? Historically we've always turned those who resist us into savages, to make slaughtering them more palatable, sensitive and moderate things that we are.

They he directly compares the stoning of women in some Muslim countries, with the witchtrials when 40,000 were roasted! Isn't this going somewhat over the top? Whoops, my moderation is slipping, damn those Muslims for getting me so worked up!

Then he's off about the need to rein in Muslim extremists and how much it matters that more level-headed imams gain ground. As if the Muslims are somehow irrational when they get angry. He actually states that the problem is anger, not God.

There is nothing about our 'crusader' army invading Iraq and destroying it. Or our Christian nutter of an ex-prime minister Tony Blair leading the charge. Bush the religious nutter/fanatic gets let off too. He unleashes the most powerful Christian army in history on a couple of Muslim nations and kills tens of thousands, but this somehow doesn't warrent a mention, but Muslim anger does!

It's very one sided and biased writing, and terrible history, and very right-wing politics. This dreadful, pathetic idea that we are the innocent victems of Muslim terror and senseless violence, and it's got nothing to do with our military agression towards them. Palestine doesn't exist, Iraq doesn't exist, Afghanistan doesn't exist, only their incomprehensible anger.

I think what Andrew is saying about British-ness is an observation on what is essentially an all too difficult to define quality of what sets the British character apart from other cultures. I think he summed it up quite well, bearing in mind that this is a short essay fro a magazine and only meant as an illustration of a broader point. Writeon needs to consider that what it means to be British was not actually the subject of the piece.

However, as an illustration, I think it was spot on. The British character, if there can be said to be one, is one of almost self-imposed reluctance to get worked up about things. It most certainly does not mean that we don't take anything seriously.

We only need to take a brief look at the circus of election hysteria across the Atlantic to see the effects of taking things so seriously they move out of all proportion to their importance. The issues of race and gender are obscuring what should otherwise be a debate on who should run the country, not whether we can elect a black man or a white woman.

This obfuscation of the real issues is exactly the same in religion. I am an atheist. I believe in physics and evolution. The problem I believe is that we are still talking about religion like it's a viable alternative to measurable fact and observable sense. While I believe anybody has the right to believe what they choose, I do find it frustrating that people choose to believe something that is quite clearly, to the rational (read scientific) mind, false.

Religion has played an immensely important part in our understanding of life in our history, and opened up discussion on some very interesting an important philosophical questions, not least of which is 'why are we here?' These questions are no less relevant after the discovery of evolution than they were before; if anything they are even more interesting, free as we now are to explore the nature of existence without the burden of creationism.

If we assume that God (in whatever form) does not exist, can I posit a more relevant question for our times? No longer should we ask 'why are we here?', but 'what should we do now that we are?'