Religion is...

[steelart]

You're right... The truth is easily ferreted out. I served with the 3rd Mar. Div. at Khe Sahn during the seige in 67-68. Much as a result of the carnage I saw there, I came back with a lot of questions; i.e. If there were a loving god how could he allow this to happen, and on and on ad nauseum. When I questioned priests, preachers, and rabbis, I got no coherent answers, just the typical religio-babble. So I began a quest for answers that went from a MDiv at Duke University and a brief interest in the United Methodist ministry, to a PhD in religion from UNC. I now operate a horse farm in central NC. My views are based upon my life experience, my travels around the world, and a serious academic study of a subject that I feel is based largely upon a mythology that is not even scriptuarally based. Forgive my belated spell corrections. I confess that when I committed that grave error, I had sucked down three glasses of an excellent merlot whilst engaging in a typed discussion - much like driving a car through a formula course after imbibing. Also, I haven't been at this long enough to understand all the rules of electronic verbal combat. Add to that the fact that I'm old school - despite the education and experience, I type with two fingers. That is a recipe for a myriad of errors and missteps. On the positive side, I catch on quickly, and appreciate criticism that helps me to improve.
Oh, I'm not a ninja. I think ninjas are vastly over-rated. I've found that a tire tool is much more effective than martial arts.

 

[steelart]

By the way, if one has a desire to take an honest look at christianity, as opposed to hunkering down behind a wall of dogma, a good start would be the writings of Bart Ehrman - a professor of religion at UNC, and a mentor of mine, who began his journey as a Baptist minister, educated at Wake Forest Baptist theological seminary. Reading Ehrman is not slogging through the typical dry and dull writing that academics generally churn out, but is very readable. A couple of his works are Lost Christianities and Misquoting Jesus. Both show the process of removing the blinders and actually "rightly dividing the word of truth".