HISTORICAL PROOF NOT FORTHCOMING

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury (but not on its website):

Historical proof not forthcoming

There have been quite a few readers' responses to my letter questioning the existence of Christ, but none have so far offered the proof that I demand if I am to unequivocally accept their claim that there are no doubts about a historical Jesus.

All they have offered so far are declarations of the particulars that they personally believe justify their faith.

David Abbott (Mailbox, August 18) says that "The Christian versus Atheist argument has gone on long enough".

This is something that we can both agree on, but one thing that I must correct him over with regard to me is the assumption that I am an atheist.

I do believe in a higher intelligence whose presence permeates the entire universe, but I do not believe for one moment  that this presence is the god of the Bible, or indeed of any other religious text that I have read.

Victoria Brown (also August 18) claims that, as a Christian, she is content with "experience and the balance of probability".

I, too, go along with that maxim, but I am fascinated as to what experience she has had  suggesting the probability that at some point in human history a virgin could give birth to a god who would raise people from the dead, walk on water, change water into wine and survive his own death.

Alan R Pendragon, Leicester