Did you know that Randy Pausch was a Unitarian Universalist? I just learned that fact during our group discussion about mortality and death and our belief systems' intersection with end of life issues.

Credo in Latin means "I believe" as I had to inform my fellow committee members. I got all kinds of arguments from them about its meaning -- New Age mumbo-jumbo would be too kind a description. In frustration, I used Google, found a Latin-English dictionary and amazingly enough, credo means I believe. Fancy that. I don't like to be confrontational, but it rubs me the wrong way to hear ignorance asserted so confidently as fact.

Credo in unum deum: I believe in one god, so starts the Creed. That one god is male and from that beginning sentence is derived the whole dogma of male domination and self-righteous proselytization. The belief that my religion is right, divinely inspired and yours is an evil delusion has sourced so many of the world's ills. How can anyone be so arrogant as to think she/he knows the total truth? And to anthropomorphize the Universal Spirit?

My minister asked if any of us had taken the Belief-O-Matic (tm) test at http://www.beliefnet.com to see how our personal beliefs measured out against the broad spectrum of belief systems of the world. My results:

1. Mahayana Buddhism (100%)
2. Theravada Buddhism (93%)
3. Neo-Pagan (91%)
4. Hinduism (87%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (87%)

Hmmmm...I wonder how that neo-pagan bit got in there.