I will gladly discuss Christology with you, but that would, I think, be better begun in a new thread. If you wish, I will do so after the holidays.

Otherwise, I think that my series of posts speak for themselves, and I would only repeat that I began reading the Bible as soon as I was old enough to read at that level, and I have done so ALMOST daily ever since, to my present age of 62. Might have missed a day or two here and there.

During that time, nothing that I have ever read in the Bible has led me to a Fundamentalist or literal interpretation of Scripture; on the contrary, everything that I have ever read there has led me in the opposite direction. That is not a lack of faith, that is reality.

I also benefitted from a very good, year-long Bible history course in high school, where the Bible was examined testament by testament, book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse and even word by word when necessary, including the origins, dates, and true authorship. This is what the Doubleday Anchor Bible, which caf and I have discussed, does today. The editors are among the best Jewish, Catholic and Protestant scriptural redactors in the world. I don't think any of them agreed to participate in the project with the intention of picking people's faith apart, and I don't have that intention either.

If you had to cross the ocean in a small boat, would you use the latest navigational aids, or maps from, oh, let's say, 1611? Why should one's journey through life be any different?

Any religion, I think, requires a certain amount of faith - some perhaps more than others. Being told that you will go to hell if you do not believe things that cannot possibly be true is something else. That is not faith, that is abandonment of reason. No, I don't believe that God calls on to do that.

Also, the people who want folklore, legend and allegory taught in PUBLIC schools and called SCIENCE have an agenda that is mainly political rather than religious. These people must be opposed continuously or we will be no better off than the terrorist Islamic countries. There, anyone who tries to 'pick apart' people's faith in Islam, and by extension the government, is taken to a football stadium and shot. A long way from 'creationism' in public schools to that stadium? I don't think so.