Christmas

David, I find the claims of Christianity untenable, but I find the wisdom of Christ as reported in the gospels as important and relevant. And so, like many post-moderns I abandon the literal claims while embracing the moral and philosophical basis. I can even accept the mythic/allegorical approach, but this is the place where I have to draw the line. The reason is that the claims of Christianity as cited by David are so bizarre that I cannot accept them as truth while filtering everything else through those beliefs.
A man rising from the dead, a God who transforms itself into a human form to atone to itself: This is not credible from a logical or physical perspective. It is insane, and it is believed by millions who trust in these beliefs before they trust in the physical processes of the universe. The problem here is that God as held by traditional beliefs is not God as God. There is a tremendous diversity of religious tradition and beliefs, and if God exists that root is of necessity common to them all. So then how can any one claim itself to be "the way, the truth and the light"? It can claim it, but that claim is in error. Existence of other traditions, (including atheism), arise from a common source be it God or the initial conditions at T=0.
In our age with religious traditions coming into proximate conflicts, we need to find a meeting point in which no tradition attempts to displace others. If instead religious traditions remain in conflict due to exclusive and absolute claims, we will have danger from threatened extremists into the forseeable future.
Imagine a world without religious or ideological conflict. Now think about how close we all are due to modern technologies. Religious traditions need to come to terms with proximity to views and beliefs which their membership may find disturbing. In some way, shape or form we need to create a post-modern paradigm in which religious tradition can occupy local validity but not exclusive and absolute validity. We all are members of many social groups, including groups in which some people hold radically different views from our own. Does the fact that another holds views and lives his or her life in a way which is anethema to my religious beliefs mean that I must hold that person in contempt, suspicion, or as other. They are not other, alien, inferior or deluded because they do not fit inside my religious frame.
Humility is the key to overcoming this problem. Humility reminds us that our views are finite, are beliefs local and incomplete. It reminds us that if God exists, it is so far beyond our limited ideas of it, that it were best that we did not vest ourselves too closely to a beliefset about God which is really an egoic attachment to an idol, a creation of a definite God to asuage the fears of emptiness, annihilation or hell.