Letter to a Close Friend (給老友的信)

Recently, a very close friend of mine from my university days came back from Canada. He told me that owing to the influence of his wife, he has become a Christian. He had resisted being such for a very long time. His wife belongs to one of those who have from an extremely early age been a very "devout" Christian who took every word in the Bible as the literal "word of God" and who has little ability to think outside of the "box" of "Christianity". I felt sorry for him. Out of concern for his well-being, I wrote him a long letter after he got back to Canada, trying to make him see the light: the light of reason. I won't mention his name.  The following is the edited text of my letter to him, which I think might be useful not just for my dear friend.

People do have to believe in something, For some, it's the Christian God, for the Jews, it's Yahweh, for Muslims, it's Allah (although all three are in fact exactly the same God, just named and interpreted differently in different cultural contexts) ; and for still others eg. for the Hindus, it's Brahma and for the Buddha, it's the Wisdom of Life; for the Chinese, it's either Confucianism or Taoism and for the more politically minded, it's democracy, Marxism, socialism, communism, communitarianism, anarchism and for “Communist” China, it's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Dengism ; and for some philosophers, like Plato, Spinoza and Hegel, it's Logos (literally the word of Reason) or Rational Spirit or Mind (“Geist”) .