One cannot do justice to the exact nuances of Sweeney’s theologocal seeking and conclusion without taking as long as the entire show. So you might as well see her do it rather than expect me to sum everything up succinctly.

http://adherents.com/adh_branches.html

They list over 4,200 distinct religions, and any large/ancient faith will have a bewildering number of ‘flavors’, too.

She’s nice by email, though, even if she does think I’m stupid.

Not really. It’s all about her personally, and not saying that it’s wrong for everybody. Her brother’s cancer is a factor, but it seems like the precipitating event was laughing at the Mormons’ outrageous claims, then realizing her own upbringing made some similarly ridiculous ones.

First sounds fun, liked Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary, and it sounds like all of the craziness that can happen in real life.

Haven’t caught the Sweeney show/book/whathaveyou. I’m under the impression that she lost her faith when her brother died of cancer? Sad.

She’s probably arguing with a bit of a straw man, though… Christian-influences theists run the gamut from fundamentalists to people who interpret the entire Bible as a sort of parable, or try to pare out things that are obviously dated.

Although the super-fundamentalists are pretty common (and loud) in America, they’re not as common elsewhere. They also tend to be among the congregation, as most seminarians go to college for a few years too long to be hyper-literalists.

The Bible is 2,000 years old, and written by some pretty primitive people, so it has to be read carefully. You’d probably find a lot less to object to at a more mainstream church, where they mostly work at helping the poor and don’t argue so much about exact word-for-word scrupture readings.

Anyway, some observations from me personally.