Why does Chris make such a big deal about religious proselytizing?
That is best summed up by a short passage that Chris wrote sometime in the previous millenium: My considered opinion is that one’s relationship to the infinite is a very personal thing. It is, by definition, beyond the bounds of the rational mind. It is therefore beyond the bounds of language. The corollary to all this is that any attempt to translate one’s own version of the ecstatic experience into speech is an attempt to confine the infinite within the finite, and is doomed to failure. At best, it’s an attempt to dam the ocean with a tule mat. At worst, it’s a form of clearcutting, of taking the most important type of experience one can have and fitting it into the Universal Chomskyan (not to mention Procrustean) Grammar, by throwing away that which can’t so fit. Therefore, when people attempt to explain the universe to me, I ask them to consider preserving the sacred character of their own experiences by shutting the hell up.
