Okay...

Just a couple of points regarding our understanding of history. I think your professor must have been very different from mine.

1. Really I don't understand where did you get the idea that there was not supposed to be a religious overtone to the rennaissance humanism movement. The move towards securalism didn't even begin to turn mainstream until the time Descartes put forward his mechanistic world view (18th c.) - and more secular world views are very much products of Enlightenment thought. From what I have learnt I completely do not agree that rennaissance scholars actually seperated religion with their philosophies, especially in terms of natural philosophy - even people as late as Newton didn't do that (if you are interested I can show you an essay that I wrote on Newton and the strong religious assertions in his General Scholium).

2. There has been evidence suggesting that rennaissance humanism emerged in Europe decades before Constantinople fell and the exodus that you mentioned took place. Initially it started off as an education reformation movement in the early 15th century - if you are interested go ahead and find out more about it.

3. Intrinsic in Plato's philosophy is the notion of a 'creator'. This 'creator' is not the same as the Christian God, but this 'creator' is 'perfect' and thus creations in this world are all perfectly harmonious. This affected astronomy for centuries - that is, astronomers, based on this notion of a 'perfect creator', assumed that all objects and paths in the heavens have to be perfectly circular, and this includes 1/2 c. A.D. Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and our dear Corpenicus who was widely accepted to be a humanist scholar (I have an essay last year too in which I dissected his De Revolutionibus Orbium Corlestium (1543) and found gigantic amount of evidence that suggests that he is indeed a humanist scholar), and was only proven wrong by Kepler. If you don't believe me you can go check this out too.

4. Have you heard of this term 'prisca sapientia'? 'Prisca sapientia' means 'original wisdom' - which is what rennaissance humanist scholars are trying to seek. 'Prisca sapientia' is the wisdom that God bestowed upon the ancient patriachs like Abraham and Moses, whom were all centuries older than Aristotle and Plato. They even believed that there was an ancient Adamic language, which is the language that God used to communicate with the ancients, and the recovery of that language is crucial to recovering the original meaning of God's words before the corruption of language took place.

5. I was just told that the 1st century A.D. Greek society was also deeply religious, despite your claim regarding 'Greek values of individual self expression, skeptical curiosity, and heroic pursuit of glory and honor'. I also know that, from my knowledge of history of medicine, that before Hippocrates came about Greek society depended heavily on supernatual powers to heal the sick - that's where the snakes on the medical emblem today came about - although I forgot what was the name of the deity. How did the Greeks reconcile the two is a mystery to me because I do not have enough knowledge. I will go and read about it.

6. It is precisely the Greek's openness to ideas that brought Christianity into Europe and beyond. During the Apostles' times some Greeks converted because of this openness to foreign ideas (you can get the idea from Acts 17:16 - 34) - but how did Christianity become so powerful despite Roman suppression is still a mystery to me. I will go and read about it.

7. The inconsistency of the Bible is an age-old problem. Well, I am still trying to figure that out - meanwhile, I won't attempt to spin things like the jealousy example that you gave. I believe that your friends who attempted to reconcile these ideas did it out of self-defence without thinking.

But I need to put this straight: the OT and the NT are two rather different sections of the Bible. The OT talks about 'covenant', while the NT talks about the 'new covenant' - in the NT mankind's relationship with God changed. I'll quote from the same section in Acts:

Acts 17:30 -
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Note that there is a 'past' and there is a 'now', in which the change came after Jesus.

I definitely have not grasped the idea completely because I have not been studying the Bible seriously for too long. If we were to talk about this in a year's time most probably I can come up with a better answer.

8. I will not avoid religious topics with you despite the reasons that you listed suggesting that religious debates are pointless. I will not try to convince you that you need a religion, and you are not going to convince me that what I am engaging in is an opium-like psychological exercise more likely to be practised by people with low-IQ and it is destined to make me blind (thank you very much).

Why I still want to talk to you about it is because I need to place myself somewhere and develop my Christian identity. It is people like you who provide us with questions so that we can question ourselves about our faith, and from there understand better what we actually are believing in. I am very much a novice - and obviously I do not yet know exactly what my religious position is (do people ever know?), and I can tell you that I am building up my Christian identity - in case you are thinking that I do not know what I am doing.