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To: ClancyJ
I wish you felt differently because it seems life would have no real purpose...

Interesting. I was an infant adoptee, and I wish I had a nickel for every liberal who would have aborted me, because they would have presumed my life to have no useful purpose. There are a lot of people out there who have made value judgements about the lives of others just because those lives are different from theirs.

As far as Mr. Clayton is concerned, there is nobody more honored in religion than a convert. I guess I'm a convert from being a religious person, having grown up Catholic, and spent some time in a Buddhist tradition, the Episcopal church, and finally, the Bahai faith. It's all just sets of rituals to make people feel comfortable about life's uncertainties.

Anyway, I plan to see the film to evaluate whether it's mostly Christian bashing, or to see if it treats other Western faith traditions in the same manner. I understand that this film does not take on Eastern religious traditions, but since the average American is not familiar with most of the practices of those faiths, it would not be meaningful to the target audience. I've seen a lot of well-deserved derision of Muslim practices here on FR, look up the threads on the 2012 London Olympics toilets not facing Mecca, for instance. But I find certain Orthodox Jewish practices to be equally strange, and there are Christian traditions that seem to have nothing to do with helping an omnipotent being run a universe.

I think each of us can look at any religion that is not our own, and often find great weirdness in it. The essense of comedy is to take things that happen in everyday life, point out the inherent absurdities in the situation, and let people laugh at it. I'm hoping that this is what the movie is about, and I'll be glad to come back here to give some thoughts on it.

60 posted on 10/04/2008 9:33:44 AM PDT by hunter112 (Gov. Palin is ten times the woman Hillary could've hoped to be, if she had stayed a "Goldwater Girl")
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To: hunter112

My best advice for your search and investigations of religions is to read the Bible. I suggest the New International Version (easier to understand).

If you truly want to know about religion - you go to God’s word for the truth. Man interprets, adds/takes away and creates a church to his liking. The only way to see the real “church” is to go to the New Testament and start reading. If a belief is not shown there - it is of man.


74 posted on 10/05/2008 1:29:37 PM PDT by ClancyJ
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