well...maybe I should be glad my recent minor surgery kept me from sitting up and following this much the last few days. My penchant for agonizing over the details would have eaten up hours of sorting out logic from linguistics from theology from silliness from history from .....whatever.

I think I will just thank Amos for HIS version of what I tried to say a week of more ago about embedded assumptions, circular reasoning and linguistic confusions.

Nickhere...if you are still following.... I see in your posts a very common, but highly developed, form of complex rationalization to support and defend your belief system. You mix psychology with cultural ideas and connect themes with subjective notions of relevance and value in ways in which 'seemingly' obvious facts prop up dubious claims with largely rhetorical links.

If I were to write a paper on 'why' religious concepts have such staying power among humans, I might use your screed for many examples, but in the final analysis, all we are left with is that you 'feel' comforted and supported by your personal interpretation of the value & relevance of a particular version of one religious tradition.....which is fine. No one expects you to 'change' because a bunch of skeptics pick at you. But be aware that the more complex your defense and argument, the more you expose yourself to critiques based on your employment of faulty logic and careless use of terminology. Religion can be explained and defended from within, after a set of assumptions and beliefs is clarified and understood by those discussing it...but...and this is important....there is a reason why religious tenets are described as beliefs! (Yes, I know that it is possible to claim 'value' for religion quite apart from 'truth'...but that introduces a different debate.)

In any case, it is always edifying for me to read and participate in these discussions, as it helps me to clarify my OWN thoughts and practice expressing them within different contexts...but after awhile, most of these discussions begin, as my daddy used to say, to be "the same, only different".

I think this tread has achieved new horizons in my daddy's view of it all...*grin*

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