Before you go off accusing Christians of being unrational for rejecting original sin, take a look at your Bible. (Oh wait, you probably don't own one. Well there's plenty of it posted online.)

The Hebrew word for sin doesn't appear in Genesis until God discovers that Cain has killed his brother and Cain claims he isn't his brother's keeper. So a lot of reasonable Christians assume that the real original sin was humanity's decision not to be good stewards of humanity.

Original Sin, per se, is a construction created by the early church, not by Christ or the Bible or even early evangelists like Paul. Augustine of Hippo and his works focused very strongly on it, especially, and the influence he had on the church is what has turned Original Sin into an alleged Christian cornerstone, not the faith itself. It should be noted that one of the reasons the church is so dogmatic against sexuality is because of Augustine's own personal struggle with celibacy.

Unfortunately, your smug "rationality" that allowed you to reject God has not also given you the desire to truly understand faith. The fact is, most people who claim to be rational atheists or rational agnostics are tragically ignorant of Christianity, its history, its writings, its theology, and its modern expression. These so-called rational atheists are as willing as "cheap grace Christians" to embrace face-value stereotypes and heresay rather than trouble themselves to understand the real complexity of any faith, let alone Christianity. As preeminent theologian Stanley Hauerwas recently lamented, religious people are always expected to learn everything they can about other people's way of thinking, such as so-called rationality and philosophy and science and mathematics, but no one ever returns the favor by bothering to treat us and our beliefs as anything other than children's tales.

If anyone here has any genuine inquiries about Christian history, theology, or the church, I will be happy to try to answer them.

In the real world, real men actually do appreciate real women. No joke!

It's too bad the real world is being suffocated by these bizarre rags that think they are important because they decide whether celebrities are fat or not. If I worked for something like TMZ I would probably be asking myself what my purpose in life actually was. Or maybe by that point I'd be so busy worrying about someone else's alleged huge ass that stuff like poverty and injustice would seem somehow insignificant.

Woe...

Do you really think most people aspire to living in suburbia?

I've lived in North Carolina, Virginia, Arizona, California, Montana, and Minnesota. My parents rented owned homes everywhere except in Montana, where we own our own home, and now I go to school in Minnesota in a charming little college town with no suburban vibes. I have been in places where suburbia really is as bad as they say it is... driving through parts of Illinois, for example. However I think you'll find the majority of places that you go to are not like this. The majority of people who live in homes don't live places like this. I have never lived somewhere like that.

In the past couple years I've done driving tours of Oregon, Washington, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The only place I ever saw that suburban nightmare was a small part of Illinois outside of Chicago. I guess in some sense it's the people who want the best of both worlds... their own homes, as well as a life in the big city... that are really driving the need for these bedroom community, milquetoast suburbs. That is certainly the case here in Minnesota, where the Cities are fantastic and the small towns are wonderful but the sort of iffy big box crap is all right in between.

I wonder how many of the comment-writers in the TMZ post are in any sort of "position" to accuse JLH of being fat. The handful of women I know who are actually thinner than JLH, and most of them are hardcore athletes, don't read this crap and they certainly don't waste their time passing judgment on normal-looking women.

I wonder how many people who are offended by the sight of JLH's derriere are really projecting their own self-hatred? How many size 6s look at JLH and hate her for being a size 2?

In other news, does anyone else remember the days of Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts was a size 6 and hot? I'll go back and watch that movie again but I was pretty sure she was still quite thin....

Don't know what shows and movies you're watching, but my favorite stars are Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer and they don't often appear in the gossip rags....

Somehow I don't see Catherine Price as the sort to watch The Hills or whatever it is they're hyping in People these days.