[Perndog]

I don't understand how you can imagine Anton LaVey being a Christian, I kind of thought the whole world knew who and what he was.

And if in fact that post was directed at me, I object. You pegged me very wrongly, and after reviewing my own posts, I can't find anything that would have brought you to that conclusion without some serious leaps. I am quite indifferent to Christianity and most other religions as institutions, and it offends me that you would imply that I am obsessed with it and that I am proud of my ability to attack it. For one, attacking Christianity is far too easy to consider it an accomplishment, and for another, I should hope I have more pressing issues in my life than to tear apart a belief system that isn't important to me. I will leave that to the teenage atheists, who do center their lives around Christianity just because 1) it bugs them or 2) it's rebellious to badmouth God. That is not me. I am not the one starting threads about how Christianity teaches ignorance or about picking apart the Bible. I am only jumping in and responding to the arguments people make.

I think our misunderstanding is coming from the discussion veering off course. I will readily accept that the existence of Christianity has shaped who I am, but that's a historical thing, and I didn't think that's what we were talking about. The last post of yours before we jumped to this new train of thought referred to people misunderstanding the essence of Christian teachings, to the basic reasons behind them, and to the "spiritual" nature of them. Since it sounded like you believed that Christianity had some good points everyone could take and apply to themselves, I felt it necessary to argue that; since you said everyone misunderstands Christian teachings, I asked you to enlighten me; and since you emphasized spirituality, I told you spirituality means nothing to me. You repeated in your next posts that Christianity has "good things...necessary factors to the overall development of things," which I took to mean there are things in Christianity that everyone needs or can benefit from, and once again, I disagreed.

If you want to talk about how people are influenced by exposure to ideas and by history, we can start another thread and talk about that. The issue I was discussing is whether there are elements of Christianity that have intrinsic value, such that *everyone* can and should apply them. Since, as I said, the only Christian values that I hold either existed before the birth of Christ or are beyond my awareness, I don't find any part of Christianity good or necessary in its own right.

Are we clear? I hope so.

I think I'll be done with this thread now - aside from the tiresome misunderstanding and character attacks, your substandard spelling and grammar are starting to cause eye strain.