I saw the film last night with Jacques and Sophie, who are both fairly strong Catholics. I guess I should have expected it, but afterwards Jacques asked me the very difficult question, "do you believe". Unfortunately, my first answer, after some umming and aahing, was "no", which I then proceeded to qualify for 10 minutes. I think this might have upset Sophie, although I hope not - I have too few friends over here to lose them.

I thought about it a bunch more last night, and now have a better answer. For me, it doesn't really matter whether its true or not, since I don't really consider its truth important or even relevant. The bible's message to me (and I realise it is different for many or most others, in particular church-goers) has nothing to do with historical accuracy, and everything to do with trying to get a message across about how one should live one's life. Much of the material in the old testament is, in fact, so bizarre and contradictory by my standards of proper behaviour, that it almost begs that the book as a whole not be taken as a history. As such, I don't. To be honest, another factor in this is the huge weight of the crimes perpetuated in the name of Christianity, by the church and others, which really makes me pretty averse to organised (sic) religion.

Phew, thank goodness that's out of the way. Now I can go back to not thinking about religion for a while :-)