A Reasonable Voice

I know what you are thinking...A reasonable voice in this forum? pshhha


Well, check out this guy, and tell me what you think...

Reza Aslan Introduces Jesus The Zealot... And Revolutionary To HuffPost Live (VIDEO)


Most people are unfortunately woefully ignorant of what is called "the historical Jesus". The character that is painted from historical study is much less flattering than what most modern Christians purport, yet so much more inspirational and respectable.

The way I think of religion is a method of distilling pure spiritual experience into metaphorical language. Consequently, it is necessary to dig through mountains of bullshit to find the so called diamond in the rough.

I saw a few of Aslan's interviews...interesting stuff -- even the Fox interview.

I don't think "...religion is a method of distilling pure spiritual experience into metaphorical language" goes far enough. The metaphoric language tends to be a sound (and necessary) initial interface to those spiritual experiences. It's the long, slow, disintegration of that initial interface to manageable doctrine, all created by men well removed from the first metaphors (much less that spiritual experiences), that marks the real bullshit clouding organized religion's view of reality.

I haven't read his book yet, but Aslan seems to have done the research to shovel off a lot of that bullshit; and boy are the fundamentalists pissed!