Great to see another Zimbo atheist! I'm a diasporan as well, but live much closer to home in Botswana.

Cheers,

Jabu

I correspond occasionally with a Christian in Tennessee.  I met her when she lived here in Minneapolis, MN.  She will respond to my emails if I talk about the weather or if I send her cookie recipes, but if I say anything about religion, she suddenly turns into a cold brick wall.  I don't know why this is.  I think dealing with religious issues is too complicated for her.  Take this biblical passage, for instance (Good News Bible):

Matthew 10:34--“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. :35--I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law"

So, the Christian will claim that Jesus is about love and peace, when it's obvious that Jesus is about bloody violence and promoting community discord--right down to individual families.

Brian, I would be interested in knowing how your family responds to this passage in their Bible. To me, Jesus is the Prince of Darkness, of fear, of brimstone and fire, of eternal suffering.  That is the darkness that reigned during Europe's Dark Ages. 

Light, on the other hand, is knowledge of the real world and how it works, what causes diseases (not evil spirits, but pathogens). 

Nail them on the idea of talking snakes.  Ask them if there are any more talking snakes in the world.  (Well, there are: Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, etc.)  But if members of your family can't come up with a specific species of snake that can speak (any language will do), then what happened to talking snakes? If they're educated, then surely they understand what "evidence" is.