Wow! Now that is amazing. Very, very blatant. Does "The Sopranos" frequently have humorous parts? I've only seen one episode.

"I thank you'll find those people all have an agenda."

Duh. I'm an atheist, and even I can get this one. The Bible says all creatures in the Garden of Eden were vegetarians. They didn't eat each other's flesh until the humans got kicked out.

"T-rexes would have eaten Adam and Eve". Please. That's such a softball statement, any evangelical with lips could knock it out of the park. Trying to defeat an illogical, emotional point-of-view with another is rhetorical suicide.

As they say: "Don't try to argue with an idiot. They'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience."

Which is exactly what the evangelicals want. They want the oh-so-prized "discussion" to be on an entirely emotional level, with no respect for "facts" or "logic".

When the basis of truth is once again reduced to who can yell loudest, the evangelicals win. And then American society really will look a lot like the Flintstones.

i just saw that episode as an encore last night. i love how they chose the creepiest looking dude ever to play the evangelical. this actually might have been one of the most purely humorous segments of the show.

Salvation and Evolution are not mutually exclusive.

And "Evangelicals" are not all ignorant (although the ones that are make it real hard for the rest of us).

SEAN

This just in: The U of U disovers a new dinosaur.

Estimated to have lived here 75 million years ago.

Some evangelicals would have you believe that existence was created from nothing, that all laws of thermodynamics are made up and advocated by those with an agenda to kill an imaginary friend in the sky that created you and me with free will but will send you to eternal damnation if you don't do what they say he says.

Fundies, afraid of reality since 4000 BC.

There's another great scene before this one, where the evangelical is accompanied by a guy with a "Terri Schiavo Vigil" t-shirt, which contains the phrase "You Go Girl!"

Here's my question for creationists: According to you, God has existed forever. Many millions of billions of years. But the world was only created 6000 years ago. Why'd he wait so long?

and the intelligent designer gave them pointy teeth to grind up the plant fibers in their vegan meals? totally makes sense!

Wow, I can't believe that clip stirred up debate. I thought it was just plain funny.

It's not idiotic at all. I know the creationists would say that all animals were vegetarian in the Garden of Eden, but isn't it common sense that T-Rex doesn't have those giant teeth in order to eat apples and grass? I think that what this really goes to show is that even people who wouldn't ordinarily be considered scientifically literate can still dismiss some nonsense on the basis of common sense. Great stuff.

What I want to know is, did T-rex have those six-inch long teeth clearly designed for tearing into flesh BEFORE the Fall, or was it modified AFTER the Fall? If it was before, why did God design it that way? And if it was after, why isn't there any fossil evidence of the docile T-rex version?

What I cannot stand is the way he said that it was in the Bible as if that's the final statement as it's God's work.

If someone said the same thing, I will remind him that the Bible was mainly made up of 4 Gospels, censored and shortlisted from over 200 writings by the Church Council convened by Emeperor Constantine in the 4the Centurty BC, a council which also voted to make Jesus the son of God.

The funny thing is not only are these Gospels merely translations on writings in Greek, Araemic and other dead languages, their original documents have long dissapeared and many scholrs have noticed that there are many translation mistakes and biases, especially the most commonly used King James edition.

What is even more interesting that the Christian writings not included in the Bible, which was called the Gonstic writings, included writings by Jesus himself, who wrote as a man as well as writings thatstate that the "Snake and apple" are merely moral fables, not historical fact.

Evangelicals really need to know more before doing the holier than thou routine on non-believers. Their ignorance and deceit can really be appalling.

It's as if they think they can make up and prop up a perfect religion just because they believe it so.

"Here's my question for creationists: According to you, God has existed forever. Many millions of billions of years. But the world was only created 6000 years ago. Why'd he wait so long?"

I'm not necessarily a "creationist" ... but

1) Christians believe that God is OUTSIDE of time. He has always existed and always will. He is not bound by time, so there was no literal period of years that God "waited" to create anything.

This is hard for me to grasp, because I am a creature who is temporal. I am bound by time, each event has a precurser and another event that followes it.

The idea that there is a "place" where time is not an issue is very foreign and I can't fully describe it.

But, if there is a God, he cannot be bound by anything, even time.

Regardless, let's assume that God is bound by time. We'll say that he did "wait" for a long time to create everything ...

so what?

maybe he waited that long because he felt like it?

what does this question even really prove?

SEAN

Why'd he wait so long?

My guess is, he was puffing on something.

4:20 (Godly hours run longer I guess) LOL!

It's a joke, AsinineAmerican!

If you are familiar with the show, you know that the Christopher character constantly throws out some ridiculously simple and silly gems like this one.

To Calatar: Yes, the Sopranos is frequently funny. That's part of its appeal. But you have to watch from the beginning of the series, because much of the humor comes from familiarity with the thoroughly developed characters.

Thanks for the interesting catch, Norm. I don't have HBO.

Tony Soprano has always had issues with religion. He's always been uncomfortable with the things he's been told by the church and others. The whole Italian-Catholic psychology thing has come up a lot since the series started years ago.

The entire episode from which this clip was taken had existential questions (and religious hypocrisy) as a recurring theme. The patient in the next room is a retired engineer with some rather Zen ideas about the structure of the universe. Tony's sister puts an "inspirational" Native American quotation by his bed. And one of the main characters discovers that his "aunt," a nun on her deathbed, is actually his mother (who strayed from her vows).

The Born Again guy who comes in with the priest is the former boyfriend of Tony's sister has been a figure of fun throughout the series... Incredibly dumb, with a one-track mind (constantly greeting everyone with the pat phrase "Have you heard the good news? ... He is risen.")

What I want to know is, did T-rex have those six-inch long teeth clearly designed for tearing into flesh BEFORE the Fall, or was it modified AFTER the Fall? If it was before, why did God design it that way? And if it was after, why isn't there any fossil evidence of the docile T-rex version?

Posted by: saurabh | April 4, 2006 01:03 PM

The simple answer is that before the fall there was no death. No death, no fossils. After the fall, T-Rex and all the other predators got their claws and sharp teeth. The prey got screwed in the deal I guess.

Now, what about all the other billions of species that ever existed and were on Earth at the same time? How'd that work out?

Wow, I can't believe that clip stirred up debate. I thought it was just plain funny.

Yeah, me too. That question, "What, like the Flinstones?"... lololol...

Great comic relief.

Hi Jo, the clip was funny of course : >

But oddly frightening. I've recently talked to a colleague from an Evangelist Church and she told me that evolution is not a fact with a straight face : <

And the thing is she could not back it up when I asked her too.

Does having a religion means dropping one's IQ by 50 points?

Is it something to do with squashing healthy self-doubts with unquestioning faith?

Does people lose the ability to question when they choose to obey?

Sigh...

Kestrel -

You might want to read something other than "The Da Vinci Code" before you pronounce on early Church history.

• First off, the creation accounts are in the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures that long predated the life of Jesus. Nasty 'ol Constantine didn't have anything to do with them.

• Of course, he didn't have anything to do with the New Testament, either. The council was primarily interested in settling the Arian controversy, which held that Jesus was a created being (the first creation, before time and space and all the angels, and having every divine attribute, responsible in turn for the creation of the Universe, but not actually one being with God the Father). It's actually a fairly subtle point of theology (that, to be sure, had a great effect on the ultimate direction and dissolution of the followers of Arius), not someone coming along and saying "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's take this guy we've talking about for a few centuries, the one we all know was just, like, a teacher, and - get this - convince everybdy he's, like God."

• The canon of the New Testament was not even discussed at Nicea, and had already been pretty much codified by then (although there continued to be disputes about some of the epistles up until the Council of Trent - if you're a Catholic, anyway. Protestants still dispute some of the books). The Gnostics, who were at best a fringe movement that took some the ideas floating around the edge of the Church and adopted them into a a preexisting mystical worldview (think New Agers). All Constantine did was commission 50 copies of the Bible to be made and distributed to churches around the Empire (an expensive proprostion before the printing press)

• Greeks would be interested to hear that their language is dead.

• True, there are translation errors, but nothing that really changes the essence of the text. And as for the "original documents" being lost - ok, we don't have the original manuscript that Mark scratched out the gospel on. But we have more copies of these texts, from an earlier time period, in better condition, than of any other ancient text. We have much better historical records of the life of Jesus than we have of the Life of Julius Caesar.

• And as for the "snake and the apple" being mythical stories not necessarily to be taken literally: well, that's been the Catholic position at least since Augustine in the late 4th century. (Read his "Confessions" - he has a chapter on it.) You don't need to being in spurious Gnostic writings to establish that.

I'm not a creationist, nor am I trying to convince anyone of the truth of Christianty. But (especially since the success of Dan Brown's ridiculous book) I have seen so many otherwise educated and reasonable people swallow this sort of stuff whole without doing even the most elementary research about it. Seems like people (Christian, atheist, whatever) will eagarly beleive any outlandish claim that confirms their preexisting worldview. In the age of the internet there's just no excuse anymore.

"Greeks would be interested to hear that their language is dead."

Umm.

The Greek that's spoken now, and the Greek the New Testament was written in are very different. Ancient Greek is dead.

Oddly, a Cardinal from the Roman Catholic Church has written a paper stating that the official position of the church is FOR Evolution. Basically, God can create anything anyway he wants to.

As an aside, I've found that if you want to know a creator, study the creation. If God didn't use evolution, then why is it rampant now? Why is this years Cold different from last years? (mutation, survival of the fittest)

It seems very odd to me that people who "believe in God" try to restrict him far more than folks that simply record what they find in His world.

-Craig

oh, and Jesus' name was (roughly)Joshua. If I ever write a book about the Son of God. I WILL get the name right. Just seems kinda important to me.

I am currently in a spat with my mother over the nature of things. As she is getting older she is becomming more rabidly biblical. I'm trying to get her to understand that the bible isn't the word of God, its the words of men. And we all know that men pervert religion to further their own means. She pointed to passages in the book of Revelations as evidence that gays are bad. I about flipped out saying that believing in revelations is about as intelligent as believing the predictions of nostradamus.

I wonder how it would go over if I told her that I am a filthy athiest?

Hi Jimbo, Thanks for the read. I noticed quite a lot of mistakes in you rant.

Here's my attempt to clarify them. You might want to read something from the non-mainstream and unbrainwashed writings on Christianity before commenting further on my reading list. And I do consider the Da Vinci Code mainstream writing designed for the masses, not for the introspective yokels like me.

1] I read the Da Vinci Code just last year. I read the Bible 10 years ago during my 4-year stay in an Anglican school. Since then I have been to different churches and I have found other Christian writings are a far more interesting read than the Bible ever was. They are also far more real

2] If you are serious about finding more about Christianity, you have to read the Gnostic writings. You will learn the biases in the 4 main Gospels, that are never made apparent in the New Testaments. Compare the Gospel of Thomas to the one by John and you will know why John labelled Thomas as Doubting Thomas. Thomas was one of the key proponents in projecting Jesus as a man and Christianity as a very humanistic, not theocratic, way of life. He saw Jesus as infinitely human and humane in his views. The Catholic Church will never accept this view from Thomas.

2] You misread my point on the Church Councils. It was then that the Gospels for the Bible were shortlisted and codified. The most important contribution was voting to make it official Jesus' divinity. No points on guessing how much influence this bureactics decidion had on on excluding the Holy Gospel of Thomas.

3] Did Augustine also mention that Adam and Eve was also a moral fables? What other so-called Historical events in Christian history are really facts? You have to read the Gonstic writings to find out, if you have the courage. I'm not going to spoil the surprise for you.

4] We do not have better historical records of the life of Jesus than we have of the Life of Julius Caesar. Those records are mostly secondary accounts written decades after Jesus died. A real scholar will never take them as the real thing.

There are many translations of the Bible and many differ in tone, stress and scholars i.e. even quotations that contradicts the commandment to preach i.e. the Holy Ghost ask not to preach in Asia. There were also parables and events that were never part of the original documents but were included by the scribes and translators. You can read about one such case:

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/03/bartehrmanwit.html#comments

I also have a CD compilation of all the known Bible contradictions for your information if you are interested.

You can choose to believe otherwise but this is the uncomfortable truth that all of us have to face when we do a background check on religions that claim to be perfect and knows what's best for us. Can it stand under scrutiny? Can it back up what it says.

A person's faith should never be lightly given. Nor taken for granted.

Just my 5 cents.

So Kestral, help me out here. (I trust your opinion and my knowledge of the Bible is very limited). How many years after Jesus' birth did Thomas write what he had to say about Jesus? So everything about Jesus isjust secondary accounts? And how did they know what he said? So why didn't Jesus write his own account of what he had to say? Didn't he know how to write? How many writings from Jesus' time still exist? How many writings from the time Jesus lived say anything about this man?

Hi Jo Ann, as a fellow wanderer, you should never trust anyone when it comes to religions. Religion to me is about self discovery and personal discoveries. it cannot be taught as it should be experienced though the things you see, hear and read.

As to your question on when it is written, there are 2 schools of thought on this. It is either written 50 years before the 4 NT Gospels or 100 years later. There hasn't been enough research done since it was rediscovered in 1945, despite the best efforts of the Church to keep it hidden forever as many of its writings run counter to the Orthodox views of Christianity.

Today, I'm reading about the discovery of the Gospel of Judas and it is interesting to note that contrary to the picture painted by the New Testaments, Jesus actually asked Judas to turn him in.

Did the Church exclude this Gospel from the New Testaments may be because of the official position that people who commit suicide go to Hell? You tell me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060406/tsnm/religionjudasdc;ylt=Anb.lTW7.9ktSkEn3OhrlTGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060406/tsaltafp/usegyptreligion;ylt=ArUKV8i6KV6U80BuX3I8hDKs0NUE;ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

Kestral, I don't really spend too much time trying to figure out whose interpretation of the Bible is correct and getting into the details. See, I am not even sure who all these people were who contributed to the Bible and on what basis they said what they said.

Interesting how no one even really knows when the gospel of Thomas was written.

Before I get into studying any manuscript, I would be interested in knowing who the author is and on what authority they are speaking.

JoAnn,

Have you clicked on the top blogad in the sidebar. It's about Brian Fleming's DVD The God Who Wasn't There. I bought a copy of the DVD when it first came out great stuff. He has a clip available on when the first writing on Jesus' life was recorded.

Hi Jo Ann, I respect your views and I totally with them as you can't trust writings which are not backed up by established sources and when the real authors are not known, so you have no way of knowing he or she has an agenda or not.

That's the thing about the Gospels. No scholars can definitely tell you who wrote it. The Gospels are not necessarily written by the Apostles they are names after, hence the need to treat events in Christianity as fables.

As for people who claimed the Bible has few contraditions, just a few years back, linguists discovered that there was an error in translation in that Jesus did not walk on water. The correct translation was that he walked beside it.

Now researchers found another contradition today:

Floating Ice May Explain How Jesus Walked on Water, Researchers Say

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040501709_pf.html

Acutally you won't go far wrong by treating as classical literature or a work of popular fiction i.e. the Da Vinci Code of the Dark Ages.

Sorry for the typos.

"Hi Jo Ann, I respect your views and I totally agree with them as you can't trust writings which are not backed up by established sources and when the real authors are not known, so you have no way of knowing he or she has an agenda or not."

"Actually you won't go far wrong by treating the Bible as classical literature or a work of popular fiction i.e. the Da Vinci Code of the Dark Ages."

Norm, thanks for pointing that out. I got myself a copy and now eagerly await its arrival. I have been asking this question and Googling it and come up with very little for some odd reason. For such a popular book, one would think that there would be more written about its historical validity.

Kestral, your comment about it being the Da Vince Code of the Dark Ages... funny! :)

Hi Jo, thanks for the compliment! I do think the Bible is like the Da Vinci Code. Equally popular and just as inaccurate : >

Kestrel, you make my day. I once had someone tell me something that is more appropriately applied to you.. that being that your are always so excruciatingly polite :)

It was Hannah who told me that, and do I ever miss her! She was the only believer in God who ever made any sense at all. Hannah, where are you?!!

The simple answer is that before the fall there was no death. No death, no fossils. After the fall, T-Rex and all the other predators got their claws and sharp teeth. The prey got screwed in the deal I guess. <<<

So you're saying the docile ones that existed before the fall NEVER died (and that's why there are no fossils)? So where the hell are they? Or did god rapture them at the fall?

cureholder, that's an interesting point. If there is immortal life on earth, I guess there shouldn't be any need for afterlife in heaven or hell.

Hi Jo Ann, thanks for the compliment. If you want a simple read on the Gnostic writings, I will refer you to the writer Eliane Pagels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Pagels

She champions a more liberal and tolerant reading of Christian texts, compared to the fundamentalists who hew to John's abolutist and bible literalist view. (I just bit my tongue)

Some quotes for your reading pleasure:

"Her New York Times bestseller, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), focuses on religious claims to possessing the ultimate truth. In it Pagels contrasts the Gospel of Thomas with the Gospel of John, and argues that a close reading of the works shows that while John emphasizes that Jesus is the "light of the world", Thomas teaches individuals that "there is a light within each person, and it lights up the whole universe. If it does not shine, there is darkness." Thomas also shares with other supposed secret teachings a belief that Jesus is not God but, rather a teacher who seeks to uncover the divine light in all human beings. Pagels argues that the Gospel of John was written as a reaction and rebuttal to the Gospel of Thomas. In John, the apostle Thomas is portrayed as a disciple of little faith who cannot believe without seeing, and very strong emphasis is put on accepting Jesus as the center of belief. During the time of persecution of Christians, the church fathers constructed the canon, creed and hierarchy, suppressing some of its spiritual resources in the process, in order to avoid conflict with Roman law and religion."

She talks more about John in this interview:

"One of the biggest "finds" was the Gospel of Thomas (read the text), which some people call a gnostic gospel. Your new book puts forward the hypothesis that the canonical Gospel of John may have been written in response to Thomas' gospel, to refute Thomas.

Yes. Many people have pointed out that the two gospels have a lot in common. They are both different from the other gospels we know, as symbolic and poetic interpretations of Jesus' teaching. But they have a very different practical turn. They both speak about Jesus as the divine light of the world that comes into the world, and the divine energy of God manifested in human form. But the message of the Gospel of John is that Jesus alone is that divine presence among us. Thomas' gospel suggests that Jesus taught something quite different, which is that everyone, in fact all being, came from that divine source [and that we can access that divinity on our own].

Yet you say in the book that the very 'heretics' who embraced Thomas' ideas were drawn to the Gospel of John.

It is surprising. They could read [John] as poetry, with a wide range of interpretation. If you can read it that way, you can find things in it that Christians have found in it for hundreds of years: mysticism, poetry. It's precisely for that reason that one of the second-century church fathers, Irenaeus, said, "The Gospel of John is all right, but you have to read it my way." His way meant Jesus alone offers access to salvation and that believing in him is the only way to truth, and that not believing is a sure path to damnation.

This, of course, has been the fundamental teaching of many Christians for thousands of years. I'm not trying to discredit it, I'm just saying, "This is not the only possible construction of Christianity by a long shot." Many people point to Jesus' statement in John 14:6: "No one comes to the father but by me." But in the totality of the accepted Christian canon, there are passages that do indicate there's a spark of the divine in everyone. There's "The kingdom of God is within you" in Luke, as you mention in the book, or Paul's "your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit." Other parts of the Christian canon seem to put forward this more open view that you say is characteristic of Thomas' gospel.

It shows that the teaching of Jesus was recorded and transmitted in various ways. These suggestions [of divinity within oneself] are absolutely there, in Luke and all over the place, if you're looking for them. But they were later placed in a context of a much more strict interpretation, so they're often read that way.

What fascinated me in some of these texts that were discovered is that there were people who read the Gospel of John and Thomas' gospel as entirely compatible. We have texts and poems that show that: for example, a text called the Round Dance of the Cross, or one called the Gospel of Truth, that uses passages from both Thomas and John. I think they might well be regarded as congenial if you didn't have a system of interpretation that says they can be read in only one way.

You say that the figure of 'Doubting' Thomas in the Gospel of John was a direct refutation of Thomas' gospel.

We don't actually know if the person who wrote the Gospel of John had a written copy of Thomas because we don't know exactly when it was written. But I think it's clear that whoever wrote the Gospel of John knew these kind of teachings because the language is so similar to his own. He knew them very well. And yet he thought someone was taking them in the wrong direction, and that's what he set out to correct."

www.beliefnet.com/story/128/story128651.html

My interest in Gnostic writings started when I read this article from New York Times almost 3 years ago:

The Heresy That Saved a Skeptic 14 June 03 By DINITIA SMITH

www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/books/14PAGE.html

PRINCETON, N.J. — On a bright Sunday in February 1982, a grief-stricken Elaine Pagels, jogging in running shorts, found herself stopping at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan. Two days before, she had learned that her son Mark, 18 months, had pulmonary hypertension and was dying. It had been a long time since Ms. Pagels, a renowned biblical scholar whose 1979 book "The Gnostic Gospels" won the National Book and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, had been to church. She had never been able to embrace the certainties of Christianity, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, as literal events. But now she found herself intensely drawn in by the prayers and the choir's soaring voices. What was it, she wondered, that made Christianity so compelling, despite the obstacles of doctrine? The question grew more urgent. In 1987, Mark, 6, died. Then, 15 months later, Ms. Pagels's husband, Heinz, a physicist, was killed in a climbing accident, leaving her with their two other children, Sarah, 2, and David, 3 months, both of whom the couple had adopted. Now, Ms. Pagels says, she has found the answer to her quest by writing a book, "Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas." It is a study of one of the Gnostic gospels, early Christian texts written around the time of the New Testament and regarded as heretical. Ms. Pagels's book, clearly written, lyrical but deeply scholarly, is a surprise hit. Out just a month, it is moving up the best-seller list, and Random House has had to reprint it three times, with 108,000 copies now in print. Ms. Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, was interviewed last week in her large stucco house surrounded by lush gardens. "I am interested in how the Gnostic gospels change our view of what we know as Christianity," she said, "in how Christianity became what it became." She is 59, with a small face and blond hair, and was dressed in tailored black pants and blue jacket. She spoke softly, precisely: "There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing." The gospel of Thomas is one of over 50 texts discovered by an Egyptian peasant in 1945 buried in a jar near the village of Nad Hammadi. Some were burned for fuel. The 52 that survived include poems, prayers and gospels (meaning "good news"), translated from Greek into Coptic, an African language. The texts' true authors are unknown. One, the gospel of Thomas, claims to give Jesus' secret teachings. It includes some traditions thought to date from A.D. 50 to 100, and perhaps earlier than the official Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Another, the Testimony of Truth, recounts the story of the Garden of Eden from the point of view of the serpent, who is not evil but a principle of divine wisdom. Among the most revolutionary findings in the Gnostic texts were the varying interpretations of Jesus' rising. Some say that the Resurrection was not a physical event but a symbol of how Christ's spirit could be felt in the present. Early Christians were subject to unimaginable persecutions, and church fathers believed that for Christianity to survive, there had to be a unified belief system, Ms. Pagels said. Some time around A.D. 180, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons denounced all gospels but Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as heretical, "an abyss of madness and of blasphemy." About 50 years after Constantine's conversion early in the fourth century, the New Testament became Christianity's official text. The name Thomas, in Aramaic, means "twin." Thomas may have proselytized in India, where Thomas Christians still worship today. Ms. Pagels chose to study Thomas because although his gospel is very similar to the accepted Gospels, there are crucial differences, especially between his and John's.

The Gospel of John calls Thomas "doubting Thomas." According to John, Thomas does not believe that Jesus has physically risen. Jesus appears and rebukes Thomas for being faithless. But when Thomas touches Jesus' wounds, he capitulates. "My Lord and my God," he cries. Ms. Pagels interprets this as John's attempt to discredit Thomas's teachings that differ from his own. "John has a low view of human beings," Ms. Pagels said, pointing out that for John, Jesus is a divine being who descended to earth. But in Thomas's gospel, she continued, Jesus' light is shared by all humanity. Thomas "has a high view of the rest of mankind," Ms. Pagels said. "That's the crucial difference in Thomas." In John, Jesus alone offers access to God. But, she said, "Thomas's Jesus directs each disciple to discover the light within himself." Thomas writes, "Within a person of light, there is light." Thus, for Ms. Pagel, Thomas gives more autonomy to the individual. During the eight years it took to write the book, Ms. Pagels said, she began to find Thomas illuminated her own experience. "Belief was not an issue anymore," she said. "It offered a different version of faith. The other versions had become univocal. We read the Gospels as if they all say the same thing." Ms. Pagels is often asked if she is a Christian. She worships in the tradition of Christianity, she said, because "that was the language of my culture," and attends an Episcopal church. "I love this tradition," she said, "but I also love many of the voices that are considered heretical." She was born into a family that was culturally Protestant but non-practicing. Her father, William McKinley Hiesey, was a plant biologist at Stanford University. "There was no acknowledgment of a spiritual dimension of life except as delusion," she said. As a teenager, Ms. Pagels joined an evangelical church. She was drawn by the music, she said, and was curious. It was also a rebellion, and she eventually stopped going. She graduated from Stanford, where she was a classmate of the poet Sharon Olds, who remembers her: "She had great dreams. I would dream about people getting murdered and people counting hamburgers, and she would dream about hillsides and beautiful woods." From early on, Ms. Pagels wanted to be a dancer. She studied briefly with the Martha Graham Company in New York but realized, she said, that "I was not going to be fabulous." So she enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the religion department at Harvard and learned Coptic. She married Heinz R. Pagels in 1969 and was hired as a Barnard professor. "The Gnostic Gospels" was Ms. Pagel's first mainstream book. After its publication she won a MacArthur Fellowship and wrote "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" (1988), in which she asserted that the traditional Christian attitudes toward sexuality emphasizing abstinence were not part of its origins but were developed in the fourth century by St. Augustine, who promoted the doctrine of original sin. Then came the catastrophes of her son's and husband's deaths. Ms. Pagels went into isolation, taking her two young children with her. She was "like an animal licking her wounds," said her friend, Wendy Doniger, a professor of the history of relgions at the University of Chicago. She wrestled with the connection between the tragedies and her work. Often, people believe that a tragedy is their own fault, or that God has done it to them. "She did not find that comforting," Ms. Doniger said. "The truth behind those books that came after the deaths is that what happened to her is a morally inexplicable set of accidents." In 1991, Ms. Pagels moved to Princeton. She published "The Origin of Satan" in 1995, arguing that Satan in the Hebrew Bible was not evil but an obstructing angel, God's interlocutor. She said Satan became the personification of evil partly as a result of early Christian efforts to demonize adversaries, including Jews. A friend had introduced Ms. Pagels to Kent Greenawalt, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on constitutional law. Each had been devotedly married for two decades and widowed in the same year. In 1995, the two married and combined families (Mr. Greenawalt has three children). The years since, Ms. Pagels said, have brought her ever increasing happiness. And what was the answer to the question she posed at the beginning of her new book? What is it about Christianity that she loves? She struggled for words. "The hints and glimpses of spiritual possibility," she said, "of the mystery that shines through our experience." "Wordsworth does it better in `Tintern Abbey,' " Ms. Pagels said, quoting from the poem: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things