I thought - from my earliest indoctrination into liberal Christianity - that Judas was a very special heroic figure without whom the whole "Passover Plot" could never have been pulled off. Someone had to do it! How was the Jesus story, literal or not, to come out right without someone really willing to martyr himself, to take on the "Damned for all time" thing, by loving his heretical Jewish friend Jesus enough to help him out with his radical demonstration? Judas was indispensable! While the others argued over who would not betray "the master", Jesus is portrayed as having leaned over and muttered to Judas "Get it over with awready" (or words to that effect). I never have seen it any differently.

I have problems with that Virgin Birth business, too, and yet I am a "nominal Christian" at the least.

Pagel has done brilliantly here, as usual, and the usual defenders of the "village atheist" really need to look at the lame crap Dawkins routinely offers up in place of something compelling. Where Einstein may have used religious metaphor to explain science, Dawkins uses it to debunk the very science that Einstein tried to explain to us!

Like most fundamentalists, it seems most atheists (at least the ones who show up here) are so shakey in their "faith" that they have no alternative but to go on the offensive when presented with a reasonable discourse.

Do atheists have a church where they can not worship what they don't believe? They have a magazine! They could attend Saint Goliath and print bulletins and everything. Oh, sorry, I think I've confused atheism with nihilism, and we know that ain't right.

This article has made me realize something that may or may not ultimately turn out to be substantive but which certainly gives me hope. From about the age of 3 until the age of 46 I have a morbidly accurate memory. So much so, in fact, that I once discovered a large repressed memory (without any coaching, thank you) and turned it into a book. Well, a manuscript anyway. But at that point, in order to create a clean typewritten manuscript of the manically handwritten notes comprising the original manuscript, I allowed a computer to be intruduced into my life. And at that point (1991) my life becomes largely one big blur. I also drop recently acquired bits of knowlege, while what was already stored upstairs never seems to fade. I have outsourced a lot of my memory to Google, God help me!

OK, that sounds like a personal problem. Still, I am inclinded to agree with what's-her-name that memory truly is "everything." It's certainly everything that's happened up to this very moment. And now that I've had this epiphany about computer weasleing it's way into my life, and the attendant memory loss, I am wishing I'd listened to Norman Cousins back in the 80's. The old technophobe may have been right, although I don't think he forsaw this potential danger.

Much food for thought here. I'd better bookmark it.

I rest my case.

Thank you. As a skeptical Christian (is that a paradox?) I haven't really kept close track of the natural divisions between atheists, but have only noted that there are a lot of pretty insecure ones who lash out here every time anything remotely resembling a spiritual issue is discussed. You've actually educated me, in a thoughtful way, with a few carefully chosen words. Greatly appreciated, too.

As for a reasonable discourse, I'd love it. The subject? Wow...so much stuff, so little time! I think the health of the planet has been pretty high on my list of ponders recently, tied in with wondering where the line exists between what is excessive materialism and what is reasonable (given that we do live in a material world). Like, how do we persuade people to live sanely in an America where "he who dies with the most toys wins"? That's just the first thing that popped into my head. I enjoy a reasonable discourse on just about anything, really. Especially with thoughtful people.