Well, I don't know if its sad...

It should be clear from my previous post that I think there is an important psychological/spiritual/moral/metaphysical teaching buried inside of Christianity. It is also clear (to me) that anyone who thinks that dinosaur bones were placed in the ground 6000 years ago by a stern, bearded old-man in the sky is never going to understand those teachings -- let alone be able to teach them. You might say he did me a favor.

I think Alan Watts, himself a former Christian theologian, makes a great comment when he says that "Christ was made irrelevant by being kicked upstairs." Meaning, that this metaphorical message has been made other-worldly and its imperative that each of us realize our true nature (which Paul called the Christ consciousness, and is elsewhere called the Christ in you) is not understood. By literalizing the metaphor, it effectively eliminates the need for personal, direct experience of the "ground", "Godhead" (Meister Eckhart), "nirvana", or whatever else you want to call it. The message to me was: you need to believe that Jesus is the son of God and was saved for you. The message of the Christian mystics (who don't literalize the metaphor) is that we are *all* "son's of God" and can realize our true nature of pure consciousness.

Clearly, I was never going to have that conversation with the guy with the strange ideas about dinosaurs.

Prior to about 6 or 7 years ago, I thought the whole thing was childish nonsense and that the only way to be a Christian was to be that kind of Christian. I don't believe that anymore, but I *do* still believe that any statement about reality must stand up to emperical, rational tests about that statement's validity. For me, that means that any kind of literal interpretation of the Bible, or the Upanishads, or the Koran, or any of the others does not stand up. While I used to leave it at that, I now believe that these authors (in some cases at least) may have been on to something that is almost universally misunderstood.

I think these extremely insightful people come around more often that people think. For instance, I believe that Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass, is referring to this Atman which is Brahman when he writes:

"There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me."

I like Calvin and Hobbes, too!

Jim