You and I have VERY similar philosophies at an abstract level; just devil-in-the-details and all that. ;)

> Think of it more as a visual aid to show how cultural attitudes,
> philosophy and religion are constantly meshing and synthesizing.

I like that. It's a recurrent theme of modernity in my book, IOW, it's happening at an extremely accelerated pace than it used to. Time was, it took a major people-group migration (whether conquest or not) to acheive the same thing. It's happening via a more diffuse process now, I think.

> A good Christian today could be burned as a witch 500 years ago.

Well.....maybe. But probably not for *theological* reasons so much as cultural ones. Part of what I dislike about the poll in question is it mixes opinions from so many -ologies; there's no *weight* given to differences (Mirkwood may have the same trees as Lorien, but it's still Mirkwood). Simply tabulating each "difference" into a flat "similarity-space" smacks of philosophical laziness, which leads to ethnocentrism, racism, fascism, and Hitler.

There. I've Godwinned myself. :(

;)