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You heretic!

You are right, it was the relationship that I was offered that put me off.

There are two elements to what you say in the original post: 1. the marriage part 2. the relationship part   The marriage is between the bride of Christ which is the whole church together, not us as individuals. This marriage is a vague spiritual concept, and others can explain it better than I can.   But the relationship part is actually very important. I would say that at the time I had a relationship of sorts with Christ. On occasion I would talk with him and get some sort of answers back in my head. Most of the time it was just one way traffic though, and he was more of a policeman reprimanding me for wrong thoughts. I would explain the conversations now as being between two parts of my own self. I'm not surprised this happened seeing as how I was so disconnected from my true self and reality.   But coming back to the term 'relationship', Christians will tell me that this is what matters to them. If I raise any criticism in terms of apologetics, they retort, 'it's about the relationship with Jesus.' Hard to argue with that. I do think that this is what most Christians find important: having a friend, however imaginary, is a comfort, and ultimately I think this is what people are seeking from God - comfort.

Just want to thank you for this. Really good!   I very occasionally listen to Christian music like After the Fire and Nutshell. I think it is because we grew up with the music that it has a special place for us, just as a lot of secular music does from those same years. I never listen to any worship music though.

Answering the question, where did God come from? Your answer to them, "How convenient."   I think that is the best answer they can give, and yours, a good reply to their answer.   Unfortunately science has a similar problem concerning the beginning of the universe. Many or most scientists today believe that in the beginning of the universe there was no such thing as time. In such a beginning time would be the simplest of concepts. An interval of change would both define, create, and be a measurement of time. The universe consists of an almost infinite serious of cause and effect events. For this explanation of time, in the beginning there would have been the potential energy within the beginning entity to change, which would be another presently unknown dimension of reality. This is my preference concerning science's available answers and models.  Such as a beginning could have been a Big Bang entity according to many models (bu not my preference). That potential energy within that entity caused it to change in form  by an expansion of some kind accordingly creating time as an interval measuring the extent of such a change, and space, the new volume that matter would according create by its expansion.  In an entity devoid of change there wouldn't be any meaning of the word time. Space would have been the space within the entity's own existence, but still meaningless with nothing to compare it to.   Other cosmologists believe that there was a time before a Big Bang beginning believing that the  Universe was created spontaneously from quantum fluctuations in some preexisting background field such as the known zero point field of today, a kind of vacuum or aether with virtual particles within it.  Following this line of thought, the Universe would be  a fluctuation within a vacuum in the sense of quantum field theory used in quantum physics today. Other cosmologists believe in multiverse "theory," where our universe was created from interactions within another universe. This idea also has the same problem of infinite regression like religion where one could not ask, where did this other universe come from since there would be never ending questions of regression.  Others believe in an infinite universe in both time and space , or an infinite series of expansions and contractions (Big Bounce theory). Like the "where did God come from" question,  neither of these models could be questioned concerning the beginning of the universe question since there would have been none.      Since we seemingly could never observe the actual beginning of the universe,  all of these "theories" are solely unfounded speculation, but if today's cosmologists are correct at least one of them has merit.

To which I often respond, "How convenient".

Yours are all good comments.  An argument against life's continuous creation here on Earth is that the chemistry now is very different from the Earth's beginning. Just a little oxygen can destroy fragile elementary cells, even dissolved in water as needed by fish. Another argument against life first evolving here on Earth is that all life that is now known is very complicated. The most elementary life now that we know of has scores of different parts and functions, as well as multiple hundreds of different chemical and other DNA/ RNA reactions and functions to them.   Beginning life  would have to be able to eat something where no life existed before. They could consume organic compounds but only chlorophyll, a very complicated molecule in plants, can use sunshine to create food and eat non-living minerals, and hydrothermal bacteria in the oceans and volcanic pools with sulfur might do without sun light to create food energy from the sulfur and other minerals.   If the most elementary life developed before our solar system then there could have been many billions of years longer for its complicated evolution and development inside a very large comet or small ice moon for instance, those characteristics necessary to survive the beginning ocean water atmosphere that they would encounter here in the beginning hotter ocean chemistry, within rain from comets or other comet collisions with the oceans that could have seeded beginning life.    Still most scientists still  believe that  life on Earth first evolved here on Earth, which still may be the likeliest possibility despite its complication.

When I was a Christian I heard someone dodge this question by claiming that god is beyond space and time, so he is exempt from the creator infinite regress. Special pleading.