Of another world

[Lalaith]

I am not a practising Christian, but I am in no way antagonistic towards religion, in fact I am very open to it, and I have many close friends, whose views and whose intelligence I respect, who are practising Christians - mostly Catholics, as a matter of fact.

However, I do think we are dealing with a cultural divide here as well as a religious one. Most of the Christians I know here in the UK, and elsewhere in northern Europe, do not believe in the Bible as literal, word-for-word truth. In other words, they accept evolution and so on. I don't think many of them believe in Hell, either.
But I get the feeling that literal/fundamentalist/Scripture-based brands of Christianity are the most dominant in the US. So while many posters here are questioning Biblical points, those questioners I note are mostly European.
This kind of questioning is quite normal in religious debate over here, and is really not meant as heretical, aggressive or anti-religious as it is clearly taken to be by some.
I hope this may help to calm the waters a little.