[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?) - side question for Platt and Arlo

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
Christians also believe in a Supreme Being as do many other religions. The more
fundamentalists among them make God the "center of their lives." It's puzzling
to me how some here praise Indian fundamentalists but bash Christian
fundamentalists. 

[Arlo]
The whole point of what Pirsig is pointing out (in the quote SA provided) is
that "Indian fundamentalism" is nothing at all like "Christian fundamentalism".
The Amerindians and the Zen Buddhists make God the center of their lives, but
God as interpretable as DQ, read "non-literally". The entire "fundamentalism"
of Christianity and Islam is in the other direction, towards an unassailable,
literalism of "my God". 

It is all in the direction you go, towards metaphor or towards "literalism".
Pirsig had commented on this, regarding the Occidental religions (OR) compared
to Eastern religions (ER), saying that the reason Occidental religions have
much more conflict that Hinduism/Buddhism/Taoism is that the ORs see the "word"
as literal, while the ERs see the "word" as metaphor.