Enoon, you summed up what I was trying to say so eloquently. I agree with everything you say.

I understand what you're saying SWIMfriend, and I really appreciate the fact that we can have this discussion, even though we're on completely opposite sides of the fence. I ignore a lot of the legalistics of christianity and focus more on the essence. Unfortunately, a lot of the words I use to describe my thoughts are from a religious context, with all of the connotations attatched so the overall meaning gets diluted.

Two things though: First, I don't think that the bible is meant to be taken 100% literally. There are gaps in language, translation and intent that cannot be divided. There has also been heavy editorial work done. The first 5+ books of the bible were compiled by the deuteronomists who took a bunch of loose writings and put them into a solid work. They did a lot of heavy editorial work, including adding the bit about "A copy of this book is in heaven and therefore the words in this are immutable". I think they did this as a bit of informational hygiene, but that's another story. A lot of christians think that once they're "saved" they can throw their brain out and don't have to keep thinking.

Secondly, I use the term God because that's what I'm comfortable with. It's what I've grown up with and I can fit that into my view of the universe, which I think is pretty balanced. That's just the label I attatch to make it easier for me. There's a lot of convoluted thoughts and feelings behind that, but that's just how it is. Words like divinity, sacred, god, enlightenment, spirituality, etc all have subjective connotations that mean different things to different people. It's impossible to put across an untainted idea. But that's just a limitation of human language. I use the language that I'm personally comfortable with, even though it might invoke different meanings for other people. I hope I'm making some sense here!