This is actually the thing that most bothers me about Jesus. So much of Christianity -- especially early Christianity -- is about the Word "vs." the Flesh. It's

This is actually the thing that most bothers me about Jesus. So much of Christianity -- especially early Christianity -- is about the Word "vs." the Flesh. It's like a meme that wants so badly to colonize you that it will torpedo your biological interests to do it. But Christianity was also very syncretic in the way it spread, and it took on pagan influences, and my feeling is that those practices helped reconcile the meme a little more to biological reality. Maypoles and marriages worked their way back in... It seems to me that the Word (or the meme) and the Flesh have to be in harmony, each serving the other. Left unchecked, the Word always seems to want to mutilate the flesh. (Maybe because irreversibility is good for anything that's desperate for an absorbing state.) And I have a real problem with that.