These posts are coming too fast and I have to get home.

OK AO, that's more like it. I'll look up your sources later. FYI, I'm pretty hip in regards to the origin of the Bible.

And if I remember, your previous post was in regard to the New Testament, right? The Old and New Testaments are handled differently.

My comments are directed to both yourself individually and, yes, the Christian community as a whole (which, incidentally, I am a part of). I am hardly an authority on either the spiritual or secular world, but I think you might have misunderstood my intent. I actually was supporting your individual point of view, while trying to explain the reason why many individuals here (and in real life) resent, question or even abhor the public Christian image today.

Understood and appreciated. Again, my post served to acknowledge exactly that - we all agree that communication on a message board can fail to take into account the nuance of one-to-one communication.

Your words, not mine. I don't think your beliefs are bulls*it, nor did I state them to somehow get a jab at you. Unless you are Rove's first cousin, or an ultra-conservative right winger, you shouldn't be offended by my post. If I struck a nerve, that might just mean something...

The deeply routed resentment/irritation was not created in a vacuum, and you know this. The vast majority of people in this country who define themselves as Christians are as fed up with the extreme right as are the right's traditional antagonists, the left. Again, you need to be able to seperate the difference between personal, emotional spirituality and right wing party politics to get my drift. BTW, that you lurked here for years and decided to "come out of the closet" still doesn't mean that you are right or, for that matter, wrong.

I consider myself relatively clueless as well - I think you misinterpreted my post as a personal assault, which it is not at all. Nothing you have posted bugs me at all.

Well put. FWIW, I should tell you that I am currently producing a very well known CCM artist, and I regularly produce both secular (gee I hate that word) and Christian artists - which certainly doesn't make me an authority on anything, but I am willing to share my observations.

That's the fundamentalist Christian view I find so offensive: Christ says the only way is through me, so if you believe in him then you have to believe that all other ways are wrong. Well, that's hopelessly shallow.

Two viewpoints absolutely CAN be right if they're just that: viewpoints! They're orientations, or ways of looking at the same reality everyone else sees. As I've posted way too many times, faith is just that: faith - meaning you *decide* to believe in something beyond what your five senses tell you. You're either raised with a religion or you pick the one that makes the most sense to you. If you were born in Africa you'd believe a whole other set of things, and so on. It's not like you spoke to God on the phone.

You can't possibly "seek the truth" (whatever that means) by accepting an obvious man-made lie as your basic premise.

Christ is the one way *for you.* Even on this board, he's clearly not the way for everybody, and if we're going to hell it's not for not being Christian.

"The next short step" is "it doesn't matter what I do, since I can always atone and everything will be fine again."

"I just read recently that scientists and not neccissarly christian ones came up with a new way to date the earth by the earths layer formation, and previously they thought it was millions of years old due to the millions of layers... untill they found a mamouth skeliton that was embedded in what they would have said was tens of thousands of years of layers".

OH MY GOD....You can´t be serious???

(I´ve got a master in geophysics by the way....)

Who fu cking cares whether he maintained his innocence. What kind of a standard is that? He said I did lots of ****, but not that. Maybe he's telling the truth? The point is that it's wrong to put people to death. It's barbaric and doesn't belong in civilized society.

The only difference with Williams is that since he wrote those Pulitzer-nominated books, it was less impersonal when he was executed. He's certainly not a hero, and of course he can't be let out of jail. There's no "right" figure to protest. Capital punishment is wrong every time.

Whoever it was is very serious, and he has lots of company in this country!

It's shocking, isn't it.

Actually, I just read that the last wooly mammoths became extinct at the end of the last ice age, which was about that long ago.

But there were elephant-family creatures millions of years ago.

Well, Im from Norway and I´ve never met anyone here who believe that the earth was formed approx. 10000 years ago. Is this a US phenomena? The bible was edited in year 300-something. It didnt fall from the hand of God one day. The bible is man-made and thats why its not correct. Believe in God, not the bible.....Or better; Try to read some books written by authors that actually know what they are talking/writing about, instead of crappy articles on the internet. Just a thought...

Wow, wow, wow - I see you guys are still evolving?!? I believe that Jeremy has met his goal a long time (many replies) ago. Just in case you didn't know

Immprod ... I always loved Terie Rypdal, as does my friend Krispen http://krispenhartung.com/