Most of us "believers" (the irony quotes are intended) visiting this thoughtful, liberal (I'm leaving off the irony quotes from those two adjectives) web magazine are firmly in Keillor's camp:

"I don't doubt God's existence -- there He is -- but I doubt His interest in us right now and I haven't the faintest idea what He wants from me."

I'm with you on every count, except the dreary FSM. The gospels are historical fictions, created (as Ernst Renan says) out of early Christians' great love for the dead-and-gone Jesus, and FSM is a fictive fiction that is supposed to make non-exclusively-rationalists feel stupid for needing myth (among other non-prove-it-fundie-ables).

I see what you mean. Most Intelligent Design nitwits need a good spanking, and scorn-filled ridicule is just the tool.

What I am refering to is the reductionism you see in neo-atheists' attempts to tar ALL believers with the same brush, as if wobbly Lutherans like Keillor were as fucked up as ID'ers. Hence, the "So you believe that an old white man with a long beard rules the universe" argument appears over and tediously over--an answer to the "So you believe you are descended from monkeys" reductio ad absurdem of belligerent anti-Darwinists, but no less dullwitted for the in-your-facedness of the gotcha! rhetoric.

"Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales" is how William Blake explained the origins of religion: the myth comes first, and then the theological system.

"To expand on your ideas, if a person believes that 'an old bearded guy who lives in the clouds' has control of our lives, or believes that the sun is a fiery chariot driven daily across the sky, or any other nonprovable idea is true, I couldn't care less. However, try to get that idea into the public schools, government buildings, or any other public arena, and expect push back, sometimes in forms that make some unhappy. I for one am through with apologizing for possessing and using reason."

I'm completely with you on these things and imagine that most Christians (and other believers) reading Salon would be happy to join you at school board and county commission meetings, etc., to denounce government-sanctioned pietism that seems more like loyalty oaths than genuine displays of faith. (There are Christians who are soldiers in the "War on Christmas.")

Did you mean to address your patronizing message to "prytania," and did "pyromania" come out instead?

In any event, I do indeed believe in silly old stories from the past, and from the present as well. When I am reading the Bible, I believe that Moses parted the Red Sea. (When I put the Bible down, I know that Moses did no such thing and that when he didn't do that thing, the Sea he didn't do it to was not the Red Sea: I'm not a dope.) And when I read Dracula, I really and sincerely believe that the dead walk the earth.

The essential quality here is "Imagination," and for some of us it's as necessary as the religiosity that began dying out with e.g. Galileo and Descartes. Imagination allows people to watch Elizabeth and draw revelatory lessons from a historical fiction. (My understanding of Imagination is Coleridgean, as you may have guessed.)

The Enlightenment was nice (yes, I have heard of it, and of the Scientific Revolution as well: they were in all the history books), but just as limited as what it replaced. Cogito ergo sum was a necessary antidote to the excesses of institutional stupidity, but left out a lot of ways of being.

"Jesus died, yes, and was buried in a crypt in Jerusalem with his family. They even have his bones in a small box in a museum in Jerusalem."

??!!

(Yes, I watch the History Channel, too, but still: ??!!)

On the contrary--many Christians do consider the resurrection and virgin birth to be myths. There's nothing wrong with believing in myth and promulgating the "power of myth" (sorry for the unavoidable reference).

What does myth mean to you? Lies? Fairy tales? Or, as I'd put it instead, "words with power" (to use Northrup Frye's phrase)?

Myths can be factual or fictional, but they're always true.

An earlier letter-writer managed to keep the last sentence (which you misquote) a secret.

The following sentence tries to have it both ways: a none-too-bright cliche-allusion and an ironically self-referencing comment that tries to put the cliche in cute quotes:

"Still, pride goeth etc., even if King James Bible quotations may be a bit grandiose when debunking idle showbiz gossip."

Try the following, in which the klunky etc. gets as many clever point for this sentence as you can hope to get:

"Still, pride goeth etc."

I subscribed to eMusic when it had a similar plan. $12.95 a month (I think that was the fee) and I was supposed to be able to download to my heart's content. I had been a member for about a year when I, and a number of other subscribers, began getting letters telling us to back off--that we were, it seems, "eating" too much. Within the year, eMusic had changed its plan to what it now offers: not a bad deal, but not what I had bought in the first place.

The problem was one that I think has relevance here. Some subscribers had crummy download speeds while others had terrific speeds that allowed zillions of downloads per day. I, for instance, work with a university computer. I was able to put ten songs in my queue, go to class, and come back fifty minutes later with an album (or nearly an album) downloaded. As I did my emailing, I'd queue up another ten, and so on. Every day, as per the agreement I had entered into with eMusic, I'd download to my heart's content.

Here's the question: Will Apple keep the all-you-can-eat bargain if it turns out that download speeds exceed Apple's expectations? If not, then paying the "premium" price (what does that mean??) is a bad move.