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Follow-up question: Assuming, as I do, that there is an unfathomably rich variety of life on the billions and billions of stars, in their billions and billions of galaxies in the Universe, and also assuming that the beings on these planets are souls living out physical lives as we do -- Do you think that the Old Testament, and the story of Jesus of Nazareth, would make any sense at all to any of these divine beings?

I am probably in the minority here, but I consider Jesus and his disciples to be a scenario, a symbolic scenario, set up as a lesson for the people of Earth in order to better understand the nature of reality and of God. And it was played out in a way that makes sense only in the context of Planet Earth. Think of all of the things that would be impossible to translate for a being, a divinely created being, of another planet. It is all rooted in this planet; even from the very beginning with the Snake (what's a snake? No reference point) and the fruit (what's a fruit? Again, no reference point).

You might think that all of this is a bit far out, but for me it's food for thought. I consider it to be an almost 100% certainty that souls exist in physical form not just on this little blue ball that inhabits an obscure end of a far arm of the spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way, but they exist on a mind-bogglingly innumerable number of other worlds, in an equally mind-bogglingly innumerable number of unique forms.

So if I believe that, then it seems to me that I have to believe that those beings have other such stories, other such scenarios, other symbols, other Scriptures, other Bibles (or whatever they might call them and in whatever form, not necessarily a book (which is made of Earth wood and which may not have an analog on another world), but in whatever form a "Bible" might take there. And those other Bibles will have radically different versions of the path to God. God will have provided for them a story that makes sense within their unique context.

If this is too "New Age" (I hate that term) for you, then oh well, sorry. I'm not a weirdo, honest!! :)

But it is something that I've pondered once in a while.