Pity about what happened after the NDP bomb was dropped on this thread; seems its totally diverted things. Fidel I just wanted to say that I appreciated your posts (until FM dropped the NDP bomb on the thread).

Time for a brief rant:

I don't understand why a discussion on "religion" or "spirituality" must be totally swamped with comments about fairies and Santa Claus and  Ratzinging the Pope... it seems there are two things people are criticizing with these comments: on one hand unionist has a problem with the Catholic Church (and I'd venture organized religion in general), this is a very legitimate beef which I certainly agree with and which Fidel appears to support (neither of us is here to advocate for Catholicism, we're here to talk about God); on the other hand Peter3 has some issue with imagination, being very upset about fairies for some reason, theres plenty to take issue with in this rejection of human imagination... however neither of these critical positions has much to do with this discussion about God, nor with the previous discussion on the subject of the Soul.

I'm doing a very poor job of this but I just want to make a heartfelt appeal to the massive anti-religion crowd which has formed in this thread: Can you try and seperate your criticism of relgious institutions from general criticism of faith? I know that there is a better discussion just waiting to happen if excellent and intelligent posters like unionist didn't feel a need to undermine discussion of God by turning it into a discussion of organized religion. I'm just speaking for myself but I'm not a member of any Church and I don't know why, as a person of faith, I have to answer for every action commited by every person of every faith... in the specific as opposed to the general question of faith itself... that standard is unreasonable and cannot serve to help us to have a real discussion about God...

It just sucks being a leftist with spirtual beliefs and always being told these two things can never co-exist in one being; it isn't true and as such its a statement of dogma on one side or the other. 

Thanks. D.