El Stevereno,
Perhapes there is a tad bit of "cooling" in my last post, it is not due to anything specific you've said, it's simply that from the general thrust of your posts I'm seeing much conjecture, and very little factual information. A lot of "what if's" if you will.
I see a lot of "I feel" and "I believe". Personal interpretations and subjective belief based upon a feeling I've no real interest in debating, as such is entierly based upon a personal world view.
You stated in one of your posts that you could provide evidence of the existiance of the divine, yet all that has been presented is personal interpretations. I've no trouble with that, I simply fail to see why I should debate such with anyone.
You also write that you don't feel the Bible is to be taken litterally, yet in your current post you state;

Quote:
I am not a literalist...like say, what you might call a fundie. I do not believe that everything is meant to be taken as literal either, but there are certain things that seem to be true to me, because they make since in what I know about God, and it ain't much, believe me.


It seems to me then that you can pick and choose which stories are fact, and which are not, agian, this strikes myself as a purely personal interpretation, and one that I've no real interest in debating, as I've found such positions to be rather changeable from moment to moment.
As to your question on the Japanese and Chinese languages, the Japanese are conciderably seperated from the Chinese mainland by a large body of water, and the langueges evolved among very different lines. In other words, for a few thousand years, the Japanese were culturaly isolated on thier island, very little, if any contact was made with other cultures, exepting the Ainu.
The written forms were a concious effort on the part of the Japanese who, when they encountered the Chinese were rather in awe of the Chinese culture, and deliberatly adopted many things from them, including the written language.


Fiery Red