Deepak Chopra

I have new respect for the man.I saw a few minutes of him along with a mixed bag of other religious leaders on Larry King Live last night.The reason I gained this new respect is because he politely took on the fundie Christian preacher who was there. Chopra basically called the preacher a religious bigot, rigid, and close-minded, and said that fundamentalism, no matter what the religion, was a cover-up for insecurity, and because of this closed attitude, there was no possibility of discussion with the prescher.The Fundie preacher just kept saying that people who didn't believe like he did were going to Hell, and he basically came across as a rigid, bigoted, close-minded, angry prick.The nice, humble-seeming Catholic preist who was sitting next to the Fundie tried to help him out, but he wanted nothing to do with humility or anything even close to the notion that there just might be any other way of thinking other than his own that could possibly be OK.The anger and insecurity and defensiveness radiating off of this guy was palpable.At one point, in response to the Fundie's rigid insistance that believing in "the Jesus of the New Testament" was the only way to avoid eternal damnation, King said something about the Bible having many interpretations, and that it wasn't written in English, after all.Fundie anwered back something about the New Testament being written in Greek, and Chopra chided him for not knowing his Bible, and corrected him, saying that the Gospels were written in Aramaic. The Fundie insisted that they were written in Greek, and then Chopra just looked over at King and shook his head and said something like, "See, there's no way to debate with someone like that."