Blacknad:

I must confess to developing respect for you too.

But I do wish to juxtapose two statements you just made:

1. I have realised that it all depends upon your starting point - and everything flows from there.

2. " before I came to Christ my life was screwed and I was heavily into witchcraft"

This is remarkably true ... another point of agreement. I look at these two statements and what jumps out to me is that you went from one false god to another. From yin to yang. From starboard to port. Never once stopping the balance point in the center. Does this make sense?

And blacknad wrote:
"I am content to know that God is capable of looking after himself."

Another great point of agreement. What strikes me as the grossest of all hypocrisies is humans, be they philege or bin Laden running around defending the creator of the universe from the insignificant statements of a single person. If my free thinking is a threat capable of unravelling the work of a god then that god is a fraud.

What I see in philege's comments is what I see in so many at the cancer treatment centers. People who loudly advertise their faith as a way of covering up the fact that deep in their hearts they are a bundle of fear. It is far harder to hide it all, and ignore facing that reality, when you are not looking down the barrel a gun or an iv bag full of chem agents.

I am hoping that philege comes, as you have done, to be able to get past the rhetoric and engage the sentient conscious thought processes. Stop just reacting with canned sound-bites. Perhaps. We shall see.

DA Morgan