I still think you're looking at a bowl of water, AR282, and raising a lot of shit about the bowl its in and the people who made the bowl and so on, instead of just drinking the water.

Christianity is absolutely full of challenging philosophical and moral ideas...if you can get past the rituals, the traditional forms, and the literal thinking that would try to count how many angels are on the head of a pin. The pity is that you don't seem to see the philosophy or the moral questions...you just see the rigid beliefs of some (not all) Christians...and because of them you throw out the entire bowl of water and won't drink any of it.

That is incredible to me.

It's like rejecting all of North America as totally useless because some areas are polluted or have crime in them.

Why not quit bellyaching about the literal-minded Christians whose beliefs offend your sense of reality so much and talk to some who are not so literal-minded instead? There are plenty of those around.

I agree that the Eastern religions are more broad-minded and make more sense, but they too can be made into crazy rote belief by more rigid-minded worshippers. So what? Anything can be screwed up by stupid people. Science can be too.

Clarify this for me. Do you believe that a man, some man, existed historically, and that he was the man who came to be known later as "Jesus" (his name was Yeshua in the language of the time)? Or do you believe that no such man ever existed at all? Never mind about the God stuff, the miracles, the virgin birth, all that fancy lore, do you believe there was a physical person, Yeshua, who went around preaching in Palestine at that time, and that the Christian religion was built later by his followers, who saw him as the "Son of God"?

Or are you saying there was no such person at all? Totally a figment of someone's imagination?

And if so, upon what do you base your certainty that there was no such person? ;-D Upon what?????