Standing in the corner with Emily, brenda and Jessica.

I'm interested in different religious practices, but mostly in an anthropological sense (is that the word I'm looking for?)

I find it deeply amusing that when I need religious info, I always turn to my favorite atheist. ND helped me so much while I was teaching the Bible as literature; I don't know what I would have done without him.

Not only could he explain anything I didn't understand, he gave me history, a synopsis of any controversy surrounding the story, and context for how it has been interpreted culturally. That boy KNOWS his Bible.

In fact when I entered college I was planning to be a Pastor.

This? Never not funny. Although I think that you would have been an excellent one had you chosen that path. You would have been the pastor that all of the kids loved, that the conservative parents looked at skeptically, and would have had the strongest church in town.

Instead I just do theatre.

Instead I just do theatre.

still loved by the kids, still looked at skeptically by conservative parents, and strongest productions in town ;)

Oooo, I might be getting a trip to Stockholm for a couple of days at the beginning of February.

Nobel prize in sound design?

Bwah! Somehow I think not. It's looking like I get to teach a class out there.

I'm uncomfortable with the notion that you have to earn the right to disbelief, or to discussing that disbelief and having it taken seriously.

I am uncomfortable with the assumption that this is what Hil (or those agreeing with Hil) means, especially when she doesn't seem to be here right now to clarify.

I have a great amount of respect for people's religious or non-religious beliefs, no matter how they got there. And I don't (usually...I can't remember situations where I may have, but I'm not going to say they don't exist or haven't existed in the past) get into discussions with people about my religious beliefs unless they initiate the discussion. And, if someone says they just don't believe in a higher power, I don't try to convince them otherwise, no matter their reasoning. And usually things just drop there.

This is a really touchy subject, clearly for a lot of people, but I feel like we're going to reach kerfuffle status very quickly if we try to continue to make distinctions about this topic.

Walking away now.

WindSparrow, that behavior is really bizarre!

I know! I can't figure out if she was offended that I noticed there was a glitch but not a serious one, or if she totally mis-read what I had written. That, of course, is a possibility because I had often in the past wondered if she was bothering to read the notebook at all. So if she is reading but her reading comprehension is lacking, I suppose that would explain a few things. But she must be going through life assuming that whatever she does not understand is unpleasant. Or she so truly believes that anything we bother to write must be unpleasant that she doesn't bother to really understand it. Her attitude is definitely ringing warning bells - it seems very similar to the kind of paranoia sometimes seen in addicts, even when they are not presently high.