Fair.

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I'm aware, but the parallels are too much to be pure coincidence, and it's not as if Jewish artists haven't freely borrowed from Christian imagery.

I meant it more in the sense that C.S. Lewis was somewhat simplistic in his portrayal of morality, whereas Tolkien had a more nuanced understanding and didn't feel the need to hold the reader's hand.

I think the thing with Buddhism is (a) Buddha is not a god and (b) the teachings of the Buddha do not preclude other belief systems, which is why many people are Buddhist and something else as well. See Harold Ramis for example, or all of Japan.

How the fuck long were you in high school?

Ironically, I think the Bush and Obama foreign policies had the same flaw: both administrations had already written the history they wanted to make, and couldn't deal with the fact that it didn't work out.

Or "Lubovitcher."

Hey, Sicko probably actually made a difference with regard to pursuing healthcare reform. And Roger and Me is a straight-up classic.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. For some reason, this gets a pass with Jesus but not with lizard people or chemtrails.

"I tried like crazy to find some way to hold on to believing, but when you're raised with biblical inerrancy/biblical literalism/young earth/Israel-first/Left Behind/no compromise kind of nonsense, it's pretty much impossible."

My great-grandfather was an atheist, so my mother and grandmother were raised without religion. It was not a big deal. They still did all the holidays and were proud of the tradition they came from, they just didn't believe, and grew up in a quasi-westernized culture where that was normal.

Foolish Christians, God can't be seen! If you saw Him, you'd explode!

Ditto Judaism. Unbelievers are fine, so long as they keep the holidays. Going to an actual other religion, though? You're legally dead.

The critic made it sound as if that might have been his own interpretation. It's not as if Khomeini doesn't show up in secular entertainments to signify that yes, this is the 1980s.

If it helps, my Christianity-hating girlfriend really likes Methodists, and fundamentalists are convinced that Methodists are in league against them with the Atheists, Catholics, and Muslims.

For "Christian" read "rural English-speaking white Protestant." Or at least "rural Dutch-speaking white Protestant."

Didn't he describe Jesus as a short, balding redhead? That sounds more credible than him being the traditional Renaissance boytoy.

Isn't Anglicanism by definition crypto-Catholicism?

Tolkien was truly the Scorsese to Lewis' George Lucas.