[kahljorn]

"I challenge you to find me ONE parson, Rabbi, or priest who would dispute the merit in such activities. They're smart enough to realize that faith comes through effort and openness, not stupidity and arrogance such as your own"

I talked to a hardcore Christian Preacher priest monk type guy, one of the few I've met who had anything interesting to say. He said there's essentially two types of christians: Those who accept everything they are told, and those who analyze their own faith to try and improve their relationship with God.
He says those who accept the faith are good, but they should take the step to try to find God for themselves, because that is what God would want if he were real-- and blindly accepting something isn't "Faith", it's just "Ignorance". He phrased it differently than that though.

Then we started having conversations about buddhism and hinduism and other philosophies, he was intelligent and seemed to have thoughts of his own on God.

Most preachers don't know shit, they just goto bible college, memorize the bible, and quote him at every turn. That's not having a relationshp with God, it's having a relationship with the perceptions of men who wrote about God.