Reality has a way of injuring people who don't take it seriously. If you don't believe in gravity, for example, and then step off a tall building, you won't just float away.

The word "Christian" means something in particular. The basic outline and general truths and doctrines central to Christianity have been hammered out over 2000 years of reflection on the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. If you disagree with these foundational concerns - the kinds of things I focus on in The Story of Reality - then you're simply not a Christian.

According to "matter-ism," matter is all that exists. The only things that are real are physical things in motion governed by natural law. That story starts, "In the beginning were the particles," or, as one famous person put it, "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." No God. No souls. No Heaven or Hell. No miracles. No transcendent morality. Just molecules in motion following the patterns of natural law. This is the story that most atheists, most "skeptics," most humanists, and most Marxists believe is true.

Everyone has a belief system in his or her mind, a story about the way they think the world actually is, even if they haven't thought about it much or worked out all the details.

You may be a fantastic person, and you may have some wonderful religious views that might even turn out to be true, but the religion you'd be following would not be Christianity.

Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

Some people suggest that a worldview is like a set of glasses that color the way you see the world around you. A Christian interprets the world one way, and an atheist interprets the same world a completely different way since he's looking through different worldview "glasses."