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      I received the following response to this website:

Hello-
I have read a number of articles on your site, specifically your Theological Reflections, The Christ Myth, and some of the writings from The Bible Pages. I walked away from Christianity over 10 years ago because I felt there were too many problems with the belief system, the Bible, interpretations of God and too many unsatisfactorily answered questions. I became what I call a "Truth Seeker", basically seeking out what I believe to be the truths hidden in various religions. My original goal was to try to determine "The Truth", unpolluted by man. I have since realized that's not possible. My "seeking" led to some interesting metaphysical/supernatural experiences, and I accepted what I believe to some "truths". When I felt like I was losing control of the situation, I backed away. I have temporarily put it aside, in spite of what I feel to be a "calling".

The need to act has been stirring in me of late, but I lack direction. I have found irreconcilable flaws with every organized religion/group I've come across, which leads me to starting my own. I lack the time to do my own research, which leads me to sift through research done by others- which to me is always questionable as their motivations and beliefs. I'm writing you to ask a few questions that I wasn't able to discern from your writings;

1) What do you believe UFO's are?
2) You posted "a devil story". Do you still accept the Judao-Christian notion of angels and devils (i.e. the "War in Heaven")?
3) Do you still accept the traditionally interpreted Christian Heaven and Hell?
4) Do you belive in the Christian "Rapture of the Church"/end of the world scenario?
5) Why, when you have "proven" [by this I mean assuming your Biblical interpretations are accurate] that the Bible was written by man, edited to fit the Church's need, and thus fails the Biblical Inerrancy belief, do you hang on to what appears to be the framework of Christian Dogma?
I could go on, but I'll keep it short in hopes that you will reply.
Thank you,

      I will try to respond to the points you raise one at a time.

     First you raise an interesting point. You said that you were hoping to "determine "The Truth", unpolluted by man. I have since realized that's not possible." This is one of the points I am trying to make on my site (that the various traditions found in the Bible represent human responses to human experiences and these are varied.) So when you ask me certain questions you are bound to receive answers that are influenced by my own personal experiences.

      "1) What do you believe UFO's are?" Based on my observations of these objects over the years, they are craft, and this suggests that they are piloted by 'people' (not spirits, for spirits do not need a craft). My understanding of this is that the universe is populated, which should not surprise anyone, since it is a very, very big universe. The idea that we are at the center of the universe, or that the universe was created just for us, and that no one else exists anywhere in this massive place is just ridiculous to me. Churches have a reason to deny that any other life exists anywhere else in the universe, and these reasons are tied to the notion of Christ as a "Levite Whole Offerings Sacrifice to pay for the Sins of Humanity." As I point out again and again, this Levite interpretation is just one of many, and we can also consider that the Levite Sacrificial system was condemned by the prophets, so the presentation of this explanation for the meaning of the crucifixion cannot be justified on the grounds that it is 'the teachings of the Bible.' It is the teaching of the church, of Augustine, and the theologians of the church, and it follows that the church must then deny life in the universe because it brings into question the efficacy of the sacrifice and the doctrine of the atonement, as well as doctrines of 'natural corruption' which is supposed to pervade the entire universe. It is my position that whatever corruption is present is a self perpetuating social problem, it is systemic.

      "2) You posted "a devil story". Do you still accept the Judao-Christian notion of angels and devils (i.e. the "War in Heaven")?" Well, you make me wince. You refer to the 'Judeo-Christian' doctrine of angels and devils. Now my doctrine is the doctrine of myself, and not the 'Judeo-Christian' doctrine. I refer back to what I said about personal experience being the determining factor in a person's theology. Now two things happened to me. First I got nailed by that '666' at the same time that these other friendlier people were becoming aquainted with me. This was the origin of my belief that there was some type of hostile 'devil' out there as well (the source was not some 'Judeo-Christian' dogma, but rather personal experience. Now as for the source of that Judeo-Christian doctrine, I can then assume that perhaps others developed the same doctrine based on their own personal experiences, so then you will see certain parallels. If you can interpret these matters in other ways, then perhaps a different doctrine would be developed.) As I related in that Devil story, I then encountered further trouble from some of those people up there, and that, by the way, is just one more story. There are others to strange to tell now (I don't want to talk about it, but just the little that I said should be enough to illustrate the source of my doctrine. It is a doctrine based on my own personal experience and not simply a dogma. Furthermore, just because something was a dogma that was held at some point in the past by the church does not automatically exclude it from consideration, but in the end, my own personal experience and my own personal judgment are the deciding factors for me.) Now as for a detailed doctrine of 'War in Heaven' that might be one of describing what seems to be going on up there, but I don't have any more detailed information other than the few things that I experienced myself, so I am not going to go on about it.

      "3) Do you still accept the traditionally interpreted Christian Heaven and Hell?" It is my opinion that the traditional Christian notions of heaven and hell are to narrow to be accepted by a reasonable person. (In otherwords, you must partake of a certain sacrifice, or you will go to hell.) I do not believe in 'heaven' where people go when they die. I believe that when you are dead, you are dead, but being a follower of Joshua, I believe in bodily resurrection. I believe that life is a learning experience and that for whatever reason (I do not know) God has left people to experience things that would be better left unexperienced (but then God would be a tyrant). I believe that if you have faith in God you do not entertain morbid beliefs such as 'the human race is born eternally damned, and the purpose of life is to chose a sacrifice, and so be saved'. (re: Augustine's baptism of infants) I do not believe that salvation is a type of guessing game, where we are left with some inconsistent, contradictory book which we then have to accept, and that we are left in isolation, and then have to guess if a certain sacrifice is correct, and by guessing correctly 'we are saved.' These concepts make no sense to me whatsoever. For example, in the (Greek philosophy) of the Gospel of John we are told (I paraphrase) that God so loved the people of the world, that God set up a guessing game, so that whosoever would make the right guess in that guessing game would not die, but live forever. This hardly seems loving, and this narrow interpretation actually seems ridiculous to me. As I note in my discussion of the two versions of the Abraham story the scriptures do not only teach 'believe in me and thou shalt be saved." For, "What if some did not believe? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God. Certainly not." (Romans 3:3) "For God is the savior of everyone, but especially of those who believe." (1 Timothy 4:10)

      As for Heaven and Hell I don't know. Such matters go beyond mere human experience, but I can relate a few allegories. You can imagine a great and powerful giant torturing small creatures in incredible agony, forever. Doesn't sound like good theology to me, especially if you love the human race. You can imagine a great and powerful government torturing people briefly, and it seems odious, so to adopt this narrow theological interpretation of the meaning of human existence is difficult to justify. Nevertheless we do have the problem of evil in the world, and you consider for example, to employ some hyperbole, Hitler in the Kingdom of Heaven. Now if Hitler is an unlikely candidate to be in God's good favor, then one can imagine Hitler filling out his time on earth never to be seen again, having been scratched off that list. Or one could imagine Hitler in hell, I suppose. You can see that there are options here. The way I see it, is that if someone wants to be evil and cruel then they can spend their time worrying about going to hell, or if a person wants to judge and condemn others to hell, well, maybe they can worry about that rule about 'not condemning and not being condemned yourself', and thus religious people can worry about getting sent to hell for sending others to hell, but when I consider most of the human race I don't consider hell. There are other ways of looking at things that make more sense.

      "4) Do you belive in the Christian "Rapture of the Church"/end of the world scenario?" I do not believe in the rapture of the church. This would be a good subject for a piece on this site. For example in the mini-apocalypse in Matthew's gospel, we are told that the 'great tribulation' (as it is known) would take place and then after wards, there would be something like a rapture of the church (this is the post-tribulation rapture theory, and naturally, with so many people being converted on the promise that they can beat a hasty retreat in times of trouble, and a post tribulation rapture being such an unpopular option, and not as saleable, it goes without saying that those promoting the rapture go looking elsewhere for quotes they can use, and they ignore the gospel of Matthew.

"For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened ... Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matthew 24:21, 29)

      As I mentioned, you won't hear the 'post-tribulation' rapture of the gospel of Matthew preached, simply because it will not sell. So this passage is nullified and ignored, and rapturists go searching through the Bible for some other passage they can use instead. A few years ago I was preaching on this matter, and pointing these inconsistencies out, and Benny Hinn, a tele-evangelist, responded by bringing onto his program an 'expert' on the tribulation who proceeded to 'torture' Bible verses (my characterization of Christian apologetics and certain types of theological arguments). Ignoring the fact that Matthew clearly preaches the 'great tribulation' followed by a kind of rapture at the end, this expert tried to force an interpretation onto Matthew which stated that 'today we are seeing a terrible time of trouble'. Anyone who actually reads Matthew will see that this torturing of Bible verses is just that, a particularly tortured explantion. It would be better to simply say, 'I disagree with the post tribulation rapture preached by Matthew, and instead chose this other traditional belief as illustrated by the following quotes I will use to support my case.' However Matthew will have to be tortured, because to do otherwise would be to admit that the Bible preaches different traditions, and this truth is not allowed by Christian apologists. And, besides, that post tribulation rapture is really unpopular, does not sell as well as that 'left behind' theory, and so it would be better to destroy the passage in Matthew altogether.

      So to sum up, I do not believe in a rapture of the church, and even if I did I would probably agree with Matthew on that one. After all, so tradition teaches, the early church were thrown to lions, Paul, Peter, and just about anyone you might care to name were martyred, and to me there seems nothing particularly holy about this modern church that would leave me to believe that they should be raptured. They would disagree, but this is what one might expect. As for the end of the world, somehow it seems logical to me that this all has to come to some kind of conclusion. There are people out there, and sooner or later our two separated worlds must come into contact. However, I shy away from that 'end of the world soon' style of preaching, having seen first, how inconsistent and untrustworthy books of prophecy are (the prophets are at their best when they are writing poetry and there is little evidence for astounding crystal ball ability in the prophets that I have seen, with the exception of statements of faith, but that kind of prophecy anyone with faith could do). I do not know what is going to happen next, or how it all winds up, and neither does anyone else. Let's just all find out together shall we?

      "5) Why, when you have "proven" [by this I mean assuming your Biblical interpretations are accurate] that the Bible was written by man, edited to fit the Church's need, and thus fails the Biblical Inerrancy belief, do you hang on to what appears to be the framework of Christian Dogma?" First I should point out that every scripture reference on this site is referenced and linked to the appropriate passage, so people can determine for themselves if I am somehow misquoting scripture. Second, I wince again when you suggest that I am simply repeating Christian dogmas. As I mentioned above, my interpretations are based on my personal experiences, and if these happen to coincide with what someone else might have concluded long ago, well then so be it. My theology does not hang on Christian dogma. It hangs on personal experience, and personal experiences and personal interpretations of those experiences were the determining factors in producing the diverse traditions found on the pages of the Bibleand this is why the Bible is 'contradictory' and 'inconsistent'. The Bible contains a record of human experiences and human responses and human traditions that developed later (people then built traditions on the experiences and interpretations of others, rather than on their own experiences, which I consider an unfortunate human personality characteristic.) These traditions were then 'chopped up' and edited together to submerge them (in order to help the Levites push their own dogma to center stage, and in order to support that Levite myth that Levite dogmas came down to Moses on a mountain, something I go to great lengths to disprove on this site.)

     I hope this response helps to answer some of your questions.