h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From your first post:
> "Anyway, if there isn't a God I've lost nothing when I die and I will have given much and kept my sanity as a result of my faith, and if there is then I'm sorted!!"

That *is* Pascal's Wager. You might not have known you were doing it, but you *did* start a discussion on Pascal's Wager. But that's ok - you weren't to know.

> "The second chapter of Genesis only says that God formed Adam from the "dust of the ground" at the point in which the earth was still forming."

Stop. Hold on to that thought.
Now, Genesis 1 says that God formed Adam on the sixth day (1:27). And that he formed the earth on the third day (1:10).
But you've just said that God formed adam 'at the point in which the earth was still forming'. Which must be the third day. And the third day CAN'T be the sixth day. Even before Rolex.

And you still haven't answered the question - which came first, the animals or Adam?

> "Maybe you haven't read my comments properly but if you do you may find that I'm not having a go at you (although I'm pre-menstrual right now so you're lucky!), I just gave you some (invited) constructive criticism..."

Well - let me point you to a few comments that might have been misconstrued as 'having a go'...

> "I believe that if someone doesn't know what they're talking about they're probably best off to say nothing. People often disagree with things they don't understand."

This strongly implies that TG doesn't understand xtianity - which is something you don't *know*, I suspect. It is certainly a statement that could be construed as slander if you don't have firm evidence to back up your statement.

> "and most people agree that this is senseless, take racism for example, how many of us think that because we don't understand a culture different from our own we should persecute those who do understand it? "

Here you're comparing TG to racists, and also implying that he's persecuting you. Perhaps this is not what you meant, but that is what the letters say to me...

> "As a self confessed "non christian" yourself, you cannot be expected to understand or believe anything the bible has to say,"

This is saying that all non-christians can't understand the bible. Again, unless you have firm evidence to back this statement up, it's slander, and you should not have made it.

Now, it may be the case that you *know* these things are true - you may be in personal contact with God. However, you should still not make such accusations unless you could support them in a court of law. Telling the truth is not always the polite thing to do, especially in cases where the entire rest of society disagrees about what the truth is.
A useful habit to get into in these things is to put 'imo' (for in my opinion) at the start of sentences - so you might say:

"imo, no non-christian can understand the bible"

That would be perfectly acceptable as a statement, and would, to me, not be insulting.
I have to confess that I make the same obmission myself at times - it is an all too easy mistake to make.

Chance be with you

Raspberria;

"Twophlag...I have never knocked on anyone's door or tried to convert them to christianity in much the same way that as an omnivore I have never tried to convert any vegetarians back to eating meat"

Nor was I accusing you of this. I was making a case study of the reasons behind why most people find fundie Christians an annoyance, in an effort to relay to you some inkling of what I found hostile in the missives left for me by whats-his-name earlier in this forum. Perhaps this wasn't clear; perhaps you are being overly defensive.

"What I am trying rather clumsily to say is that I would never condem you or anyone to hell, it tells me not to in the bible, it's not my business who goes where"

Perhaps you don't really appreciate the impact of the message conveyed by your confession of faith, then. You seem like a nice person with good intentions, who doubtlessly would be horrified by the prospect of doing something terrible to another person. Still, isn't it a cop-out to say "ok, I don't wish you any specific harm, but I have faith in the notion that you and your family and all the faithless deserve a punishment worse than rape because they fall short of the perfect law represented by my notion of divinity by disagreeing with my interpretation of the Bible."
Please address this question, I think it is very valid.

"The thing is, you wrote an article entitled "God" and invited everyone to comment. I suggested that your work was inaccurately titled as it is not an informative article about any "god" but merely your own opinions on religious sects and the attrocities committed in the name of these varying deities. "

And I replied that I disagree with your assessment. All you are saying here is that this article does not focus solely on the orthodox theology that has sprung up concerning the person of the specific Gods which you worship, which are Yahweh the jewish war god, Yeshuah Ben Miriam, and the Invisible Holy Spirit (whatever that is). But that was not my intent, and I think that is fairly obvious to the astute observer. Secondly, very few thigns discussed in the article are my opinions. They are other people's opinions digested into a summary. If you can find any unsupportable statements that you would like me to clarify in the article, please let me know. Again, I think this is a fair request, so please take me up on it.

"Maybe you haven't read my comments properly but if you do you may find that I'm not having a go at you (although I'm pre-menstrual right now so you're lucky!), I just gave you some (invited) constructive criticism...or does that make me a door to door evangelist?"

Other then dismissing years of research as mere opinion and then telling me your God is going to kill me because I'm a free thinker, I don't feel "gone at" at all, nor am I having a go at you. But even as I made the invitation, you did accept it, so I reserve the right to unleash the same torrent of criticism at your ideas that you have at mine. Fair enough?

Let's talk about the creation myth a bit.

The first creation myth in Genesis I find sort of neat, actually. It is Babylonian in origin, probably neo-Babylonian, and as CS pointed out it was adopted by the Jews during the period of the captivity. The imagery is pretty powerful. I'll attempt to break down some of the themes I see here.

Waters were still and dark...

Chaos, brownian motion, formlessness, femininity. Early sumerians equated water (not surprising since they lived in a desert between two rivers and had to irrigate their crops) with fertility. The sumerians had a legend that the first crops grew in the fertile crescent when Enki, the master of magicians, fertilized the land by masturbating and filling the ditches with his seed. This imagery would still have been present millenia later when the myth in question was formed.

Let there be light...

And the spirit of God moved on the waters. The Greek word used here in translating the myth is "logos" which means principle of reason and order. Form, masculinity, light. When it joins with the dark waters the eyes of the universe open for the first time. Compare these ideas to the yin and yang of Taoism, paired opposites which interact to cause all form to come into being. The imagery can also be likened to the joining of a sperm and ovum, actually.

I have to plug chaos theory again here, just because of the striking imagery of this myth that suggests a parrallel. Chaos theory describes chaotic systems on the VERGE of becoming dynamic... in other words, the state of systems in between the poles of chaos and order. From this comes iterative process, observational discrepency, and fractional reality.

Ok, some thoughts on the second myth. This one is probably much older, and although it too has its origins in Sumerian legend, the chances are that this version of it belonged to the jews for most of their history as a nation.

Adam formed from clay; this has a parrallel in the Enuma Elish, where Enki and (I think Nammu or Inanna) create the first humans from clay. Clay was found in abundance in the fertile crescent, and they used it to write on, build with, etc. etc. It pretty much powered their socities. Enki is pissed with what he's made and tries to throw the batch out but Inanna spirits them away and sets them loose.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

this gets sort of far out, but the book pattern-chaser reocmmended to me has an interesting take on this; that human consciousness evolved rather recently from a bicameral mind-state. Paradise on earth is often associated with a different form of consciousness in ancient myths from this region. The nam-shub of Enki (from which the legend of the tower of babel derived) speaks of a paradise lost when Enki changes the speech of his people by putting contention into it. Interestingly enough, contention and ego are almost entirely absent from most writings available before about 900 BC or so. Compare the Iliad to the Odyssey (written down about 200 years later) A cool sci-fi novel dealing with some of this is Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.

The serpent

Probably literal animism. Forces of benevolence and malevolence took the forms of animals, winds, storms, diseases, crop failures, floods, and other very real factors of life.

Geneology?

The daughters of men mated with the sons of God sometime after the fall. This could have been a reference to early migratory invasions, although it is interesting to note that a widespread practice in the early world was to trephenate the sacrum of virgin women so that they could be impaled with spears more easily. This practice was in place, possibly to discourage promiscuity, but more likely to kill the children of women pregnant from without the tribe. Interestingly enough, there was a race of sky-dwelling 'giants' (or 'angels' or 'elohim' or 'sons of God') who were said to sometimes descend and impregnate the women of a tribe, meaning mass impalement often had to take place. This has been suggested as a possible reference to an alien breeding program by the same people who think aliens are now abducting people and shoving things up their arses.

Ok, I'm tired. Discuss at leisure (and send more people to this thread, heh)

Good morning guys...

Lucinda...
O.K. I started it but as I am convinced of the odds being highly in my favour it was less of a "Pascal's Wager" and more of a "Sure Bet", in my opinion!

It says in Gen 2 that God formed Adam from the dust taken at that time in the earths formation not that that was when he was put, alive, on the earth. It does go on to say that when God breathed life into him he was placed in a garden that God had created suggesting that time and progress had elapsed in the creation process between the beginning and end of the sentence.

Gen 1 states that the fifth day God made fish then birds and the sixth day he made animals then man.

Right, you say I was wrong in saying that people should write about what they know...the h2g2 homepage tells us that! Should I write an article entitled "The motor engine", and then (because I don't understand the manual) list all the garages that say their mechanics do understand the manual, or at least their version of it, are all wrong?

How can anyone understand a way of life totally alien to them? I watch the T.V. and I don't understand the Americans as they're portrayed on it but I'd be pretty silly to think that in the whole nation there aren't a few who are different from the ones on Jerry Springer.
And anyway, I didn't say T.G. "couldn't" understand, I said "couldn't be expected", thus allowing for human error on his part, and I have only ever stated my opinions all along whilst allowing you to have yours. All I ask is that you take into consideration that T.G. does not know all "christians" opinions.

May destiny be on your side my friend.

Twophlag...
I have had many non christian friends who have died (by fair means or foul) and none of them, IN MY OPINION, will have gone to hell. They were loving, caring and (also i.m.o.) misguided but the Jesus who died for me would know them well enough not to condem them either.

That is christianity...knowing that although God could squash me like a spider in the garden, he knows me and chooses not to. I don't even notice what I'm treading on but if I was that cool to spiders I'd enjoy the odd "thank's mate" too...and I still wouldn't tread on the ones that didn't realise I was there.
So, anyone who says you're going to hell is not doing as the bible tells them and has no business saying it.

As far as your original entry is concerned I maintain that it is not about any "God" but about religious groups and their practices throughout history and includes many opinions (yours or others) but not so many FACTS about what true followers of Jesus really believe. You can't judge God to be wrong just because christians can't be perfect. (You can slag off any christian who says they are perfect and you aren't).

As I stated originally I am very ignorant about religions and your comments on the others may be bang on but you're wrong about the true christian church...that is anyone who feels the spirit of God, not someone who goes to the catholic/anglican/baptist/happy clappy or any other specific church. Some of us are really sound people wherever we worship (I go to church in my Dad's living room).

And don't worry, I'm not a W.I. member in a pink cardigan who gets all upset about someone taking the mick out of "gentle Jesus meek and mild". I'm 'ard me so go for it mate! I'm enjoying the chat but it will end with no conclusion other than how it started...3 people believing what they can!

You notice that God and Douglas Adams have similar taste in logo design? Heehee.

Right... but Genesis 2 states that God made Adam, then made a whole bunch of animals and paraded them in front of Adam, so he could try and pick a 'helpmeet'.

So what you're saying is that TG is writing (partially) about xtians opinions of God, and that he shouldn't because he isn't an xtian?
I disagree - people can know about opinions that aren't their own - I know the opinions that support capitalism all too well, but I'm not a supporter. Same thing with religion.

Now, if you'd like to add your own opinion to the pot, that'd be constructive. If you'd like to find some point where TG says that all xtains hold some opinion, and point out that you don't, that'd also be constructive.
But to just point blank say that he's wrong and refuse to say where... that's not so constructive, is it?

As an analogy, the edited entry on vegetarians is written by a meat eater. Nevertheless, it covers the opinions held by veggies, and why they think that eating meat is wrong. And it covers them in a fair, impartial, way.

> "Should I write an article entitled "The motor engine", and then (because I don't understand the manual) list all the garages that say their mechanics do understand the manual, or at least their version of it, are all wrong?"

No, but there's no parallel here. TG has an understanding of the manual. And he's not saying that other people's understanding of the manual are wrong.
And he's also listing a lot of views of God where the manual isn't some obscure version of your manual, but where there is no manual, or only a set of guidelines, or several manuals, possibly in Sanskrit.

Ok - that's that analogy taken far enough...

So - what *important* opinions of God are missed? Have you, specifically, had opinions placed in your mouth which are inaccurate? Or your friends? Can we get this back on topic?

On an entirely seperate note... "true christian church"? You'd better give a little more detail, that's what they all call themselves...

Most interesting developments. The Catholic church is the most recent church to claim it is the true christian church (this months *Dominum Jesus*) - they still believe that the Anglican church is "imperfect". Since the whole church is supposed to be the body of Christ and Christ is God, this would suggest that the Catholics don't believe that the Anglicans/protestants are christian.

This cuts to the heart of the matter. If christians can't agree what constitutes being a christian, how is a non-christian supposed to understand.

Fundies are a group of people who hold the Bible to be the inspired word of God. As you can see from the above, when mankind applies his mind to interpreting what God wants without reference to his word, schisms and divisions abound. The same thing happenened with the Koran.

The Bible is the only manual - no other manual is required (let's forget the problem of different versions - you'll see why). Belief does not require logical consistency, so no application of logic to the words of the Bible will add anything to ones chances of salvation from it.

Misunderstanding the difference between "truth" and "validity" is a basic logic mistake (see Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico Philosophicus for details). If there is "invalidity" or logical inconsistency (according to the western linear mind of the 20th Century person - not a great filter to apply to any ancient ideology) in the Bible, so what. It is more important that the Bible contains genuine truth (which nobody can deny). How much of it is true? Dunno - I personally think that it all might be.

The point about vegetarians not objecting to meat eaters writing a guide entry I thought was hilarious. Set aside for a second that it is rather pompous to get upset about h2g2 entries (almost like the guide was a religious enterprise in itself); it actually hits on a very significant point. Animal rights activists and hunt sabs do get annoyed enough by certain things to risk their own lives - many see themselves as fighting a war. Isn't it then Ideology that causes wars, and not religion per se?

And so let us abandon ideology. I refuse to have a viewpoint about anything - and if I can get everyone else to do the same, we will all live in peace...

IMAGINE...

> "I refuse to have a viewpoint about anything"

Umm.
Ok.
In this very post you have expressed a large number of viewpoints.
Umm.
This seems strange.

Re: truth and validity.
truth implies validity, validity does not imply truth.
invalidity implies falsehood, falsehood does not imply invalidity.

I think that wraps it up...

However, what I will say is that, imo, there is a distinction between truth and usefulness - false models can be more useful than true ones, where the true models are confusing or complicated. Therefore, just because some model, like Christianity, is invalid, doesn't mean it isn't useful.

Re: Ideology

It's not ideology that starts wars and conflict, imo, it's intolerant ideology - but that's not always a bad thing - would we have seen the abolition of slavery in the USA without the american civil war? Would women have got the vote without suffragettes? Would apartheid have ended without sanctions and protests?

Sometimes the mainstream does get things wrong, and sometimes the only way to make a change is to make pain. Sad, but it seems true.

Actually, I haven't quite finished...

Just got back from a busy weekend and caught up to reaction from TG towards my take on the Pacals Wager. You get pretty upset by this stuff don't you. I understand you've spent alot of your life on researching this (I hope the guide isn't to be the only outlet for your ideas) and some of your thinking is remarkable - lateral and highly selective.

OK your guide entry is entitled God - big subject, big guy. You want it made official but there is some reticence from the powers that be. But your views are clearly provocative, however interesting they are. Here's the thing, if a hitchhiker needs a guide to God, every single member of the believing fraternity of earth , two-thirds of the eraths population at least (no matter what there creed) would probably have a book, pamphlet, tract, song, poem, story or viewpoint to offer. I think you should offer a guide entry that reflects the points of view of those billions of people without recourse to facetiousness, invective, thoeorising or bias, which utilises your gift for research and language. That would be a guide entry worthy of officialdom I reckon (and a hugely rewarding and educating activity for you). In return I will put down "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and pick up the Bible again - you've reminded me that I don't know enough about it to argue with you - thanks for encouraging me to read it some more.

"Implies" - you cheat. (Clever though).

Dowden and Swartz say "Most philosophers prefer to preserve the law of non-contradiction over any theory of truth that requires rejecting it. Consequently, if someone is making a sensible remark by saying, "That is true for me but not for you," then the person must mean simply, "I believe it, but you do not." "

In other words the concerns with non-contradiction disallow a set of information out of hand and cannot derive anything from it. This is a limitation common to the humanist but not a problem to a person with a religious belief, or to one who has been abducted by aliens for that matter.

"Implies" - you cheat. (Clever though).

Dowden and Swartz say "Most philosophers prefer to preserve the law of non-contradiction over any theory of truth that requires rejecting it. Consequently, if someone is making a sensible remark by saying, "That is true for me but not for you," then the person must mean simply, "I believe it, but you do not." "

In other words the concerns with non-contradiction disallow a set of information out of hand and cannot derive anything from it. This is a limitation common to the humanist but not a problem to a person with a religious belief, or to one who has been abducted by aliens for that matter.

As far as saying "I refuse to have a viewpoint about anything" - I was being facetious myself - I should take my own advice, I guess.

re: implies

it was genuinely what it implied to me - as I said - maybe it was a misinterpretation, but I wanted to highlight that the misinterpretation was possible. Oh, and cheat

re: truth

What *I* mean by truth is rather specialised. I've generally absorbed the view that there is nothing which anyone knows - even my existance has an element of doubt in it. Yet I have this word 'truth' in my vocab and I want to assign a meaning to it which does not conflict in normal use with other's meanings and usage. Similarly with 'to know'.

Truth: those things in which a _rational_ degree-of-belief, based on the evidence I have access to, is greater than 1-macheps.

Macheps is a computer science term, but the meaning is simple enough - all of humanity appears to have a mechanism whereby things which are highly likely or unlikely are rounded to probability 1 and 0 respectively. 1-macheps and 0+macheps are the points at which this rounding occurs. Of course, I could struggle to go against my nature, but this would be unlikely to succeed.

Note that my truth hence depends on the evidence I have access to - and everyone has different evidence - many religious folk claim to have direct access to God. Hence truth, by my concept of the word, differs from person to person.

This also gives me tolerance antibodies against people who say "This is truth", which is helpful in this age of adverts, misinformation, statistics and propoganda.

This is different to belief - for me belief has the same basis as truth, but belief is the _irrational_ degree-of-belief. This does mean there are things I consider true which I do not believe in, and things which I believe in which I do not consider true. Oh well.

As an aside, I think you may be confusing humanists with rationalists - the non contradiction thing is a rationalist thing, humanism is a rather seperate philosophy, afairc, though with similar roots.

Re: This comment by Glider: "I think you should offer a guide entry that reflects the points of view of those billions of people" - This is a rediculous requirement. Everyone has their own version of Life, the Universe, and Everything, and a complete article that reflects all of these viewpoints is akin to Sisyphus(sp?) pushing the rock up the mountain. New people are born every day who form their own cosmology, and other people with established cosmologies modify them to fit their new observations. If some people's ideologies are not perfectly represented in this article, that is fine. When engaging in a subject so broad in scope, some generalities are necessary. And it seems to me that the people who are finding issue with this article are the ones who feel that their specific cosmologies are not 100% accurately represented in this piece. If you can step back from your own beliefs and look impartially at the people around you, I'm sure you would find that this article makes extremely valid points.

Re: This comment by rasberria: "you're wrong about the true christian church" - There is a very wise saying, from a source I have forgotten: "The only true Christian is the one you are speaking to." There are more "true christian" religions than can be counted, and each one in extreme contention with the others.

Well strap me to a tree and call me Brenda!!

To Lucinda and T.G.(I'll lapse between the two of you as I write but you'll follow what I mean)

I'm sure I was told to keep to the original subject...which was that in reply to T.G.'s request for feed back, I merely stated that I thought (i.m.o.)that it was inaptly titled as it was about religious sects and their beliefs...and that incidentally he had portrayed "christians" all wrong.
The fact is that he was talking about the established churches and mainly the hypocritical leaders of them throughout history whereas it says in the bible that many will come in the name of Jesus and cause grief but you should know a christian by his fruits (and I don't mean his plums titter). This means that if someone says "I'm a christian" and then shoots/condems/punches/steals from/lies to you then he is not following Christ and you can draw your own conclusion as to where their head is at! This doesn't mean that the next bloke to tell you "I'm a christian" is going to be the same.

If by meeting a self confessed christian (ie: me) you find that we're not all as you implied in your (very articulate and interesting) entry, then surely I'm helping you with your research! No thanks needed!

Anyway, many tangents later, I can still only give the same opinion on your entry as I did before but still no offense is intended and you're all far too intellectual for me...the long words are getting confusing. Well I am a simple housewife at heart!

So what was so wrong about my reply anyway? I've defended myself against slanderous charges of insulting the honorable Twophlag Gargleblap, I've quashed rumours (I hope) that all followers of God and his only begotten son like to sacrifice lambs, stone adulterous women and such nastiness, I even complimented the writing!

Well I think that's alright really...but I would!

Just a wee P.S. to Colonel Sellers...

Just saw your last message! I should point out that T.G.'s description of the followers of Jesus represented less than 1% of my personal cosmology. This did not offend me but gave me the desire to reply that it's not fair to generalise! Maybe I have an axe to grind because as a child my dad would often say "the kids won't do this" or "the kids won't do that" when it would have been more accurate to say "my second daughter won't do this or that though the eldest is very well behaved actually". I am of course the eldest!

And I think I covered the meaning of "a true christian" in my last message...someone who follows Jesus as opposed to someone who just says they do.

Hi brenda!

Ok - so would you like to tell us about the 99% of your personal cosmology that's missing - I'd accept a slippage of 50% or so, but 99% seems like a major miss...

> "the true christian church...that is anyone who feels the spirit of God, not someone who goes to the catholic/anglican/baptist/happy clappy or any other specific church"

> "And I think I covered the meaning of "a true christian" in my last message...someone who follows Jesus as opposed to someone who just says they do."

I'm fairly confident that the majority of catholics, for example, would be offended if you said that they weren't true xtians - or that they just said they followed God... Come to that, they'd likely disagree violently if you said that going to church was irrelevant.

oh - when I said tell me about the other 99%, I meant tell me about the other 99% of _God_ - your views on angels, life after death, good, evil, are not required... that might make things a bit more manageable...

I'm heading to work soon, so this will have to be shorter than I'd normally like.

Raspberria;

"It says in Gen 2 that "

You still haven't addressed the assertion that the myths come from two entirely different sources.

"How can anyone understand a way of life totally alien to them? I watch the T.V. and I don't understand the Americans as they're portrayed on it but I'd be pretty silly to think that in the whole nation there aren't a few who are different from the ones on Jerry Springer"

Again, you have assumed something about me you can't know. For all you know, I could come from a Christian background. I am actually rather fond of making a distinction between Christians and Christ-worshippers when asked for my personal views of the subject matter. And does this piece not say that for many Christians, the practice of their faith focuses on the religious experience of love? I submit that you have not read the piece carefully, and were I not so broad shouldered, I might have taken offense to your implying that I don't understand the subject matter. Perhaps I understnad it far better than you do.

Several times during this thread you have made the assertion that you are convinced you are "absolutely right" and that others have no idea what they are talking about. Even I would not go to such lengths of arrogance in offering my viewpoiunt for others, and yet you seem intent on doing so while crying foul when such an offering is met with derision. Can you address this?

"I have had many non christian friends who have died (by fair means or foul) and none of them, IN MY OPINION, will have gone to hell. They were loving, caring and (also i.m.o.) misguided but the Jesus who died for me would know them well enough not to condem them either"

All orthodox Christ-worshipping theology of whatever stripe clearly spells out their fate; without the blood provided for them by the substitutionary sacrifice, they are bound to be tormented eternally in a state of seperation from Yahweh. This makes you a heretic, preaching your own peculiar brand of Christianity. Not that this is wrong or anything; just curious that you, being absolutely right, are so readily denouncing all of mainstream Christ-worship as wrong.

"That is christianity...knowing that although God could squash me like a spider in the garden, he knows me and chooses not to"

So when ten thousand Guatamalans are wiped out in the mud slides that come with the annual spring flooding, does that imply that God chose to wipe them out? I don't think I'd want to worship any God capable of making such choices.

By the way, I don't kill spiders either. Letting them live keeps the other bugs out of my apartment.

You don't have to say I'm going to hell. But you did start this thread off with Pascal's wager, which stands as an implied value judgment.

"but not so many FACTS about what true followers of Jesus really believe. "

Well, what is a true follower of Jesus first of all? The Jehovah's witnesses think that would be them, as do the Mormons. Secondly there are no facts at all in my opinion so I would not include any as such, especially when dealing with an ineffible topic. Thirdly, anyone with an ounce of imagination can see that I'm trying to point the western mind beyond the paradigm of his belief to the broad context of the human experience of divinity. I'm not interested at all in what the true followers of Jesus believe and I see it as having no impact on the person of God at all. Sad to say that over one billion chinese people could not care less what you believe and would never even bother to include you in any definition or discussion of divinity. This is a point you seem not to grasp; that other people aren't interested in writing about your faith. If you are, then do so yourself.

"As I stated originally I am very ignorant about religions and your comments on the others may be bang on but you're wrong about the true christian church...that is anyone who feels the spirit of God"

I think the Zen Buddhists feel the true spirit of God, as do the Yaqui sorcerers, as does the odd Discordian, as did the cabalistic Egyptians, as did Robert Heinlein. I might be wrong about some or all of them, but all I can go on is my observations and a match with my inner reflection of the world. My question is, how can anyone who is admittedly ignorant about what 4/5 of the world thinks about God claim to know who does and doesn't know Him/Her/It?

Raspberia, please internalize this and reply to it. There are people living, right now, who have never heard any message of Christianity they could sympathize with. Perhaps they live on a mountain in Tibet where there aren't many missionaries. They have faith, but they have faith in concepts completely different from yours. They have as much reason to believe they are right about their faith as you do, and they feel just as strongly about their ideas as you do about yours. Are you able to look them in the eye and really tell them, "Sorry, but I'm just right, I know I am."