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Nina is definitely the best part of the show.

Heh. Yeah. I've been watching anime for a LONG time. Started watching it seasonally in 2009 too.

If you're using Wiki to look up the Baccano story, I sure hope you don't mind spoilers! :D
There's definitely some occult stuff. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on in Baccano.

The first episode is extremely convoluted, yeah. And I always thought it was a strange way to start the series, personally. It throws people off.

But without going into spoilers, everything falls into place by the end. It's definitely complicated, though.

Hello. Thanks for the friend request!

Baccano's a good one!

Crap, MAL just ate my longer response, so I will abbreviate:
1) I am never offended, feel free to come at me with whatever questions or language you want. Likewise, while I can write terse and sound insulting at times, please don't think that I mean anything more than I say. If I want to insult there will never be a question about it :-) If I ever sound mad, and being human I may occasionally be having a bad day, it will never, ever last more than a night's sleep.
2) The Fruit isn't important, that is why it is never discussed. It was the act that was important. Eve had seen the fruit countless times before, but she was never tempted until the snake talked to her.
3) Sometimes you can't teach (which incidentally was what I was saying about Buddhism and why they don't answer you - again, what is the sound of one hand clapping (there is actually an answer to this) . Imagine having a child who loves to run into the street. You can try to tell them how dangerous that is, but children don't always understand. In those instances you have to "put the fear of God into them" until they are wise enough to understand. The moral of the "Garden of Eden" isn't that knowing Good and Evil is bad, but rather once you decide to exercise Free Will and make choices on your own, you own the consequences. Children escape punishment for the very reason that they cannot understand right from wrong, but in exchange they have to submit to their parents. If you want to be treated as an adult you have to be willing to bear the consequences: though this is a reality that the baby boomer generation has done its damn best to avoid, even if they screw all future generations.
4) You have probably guessed by now that I am a militant agnostic, for me religion is akin to psychology, though I prefer religion to psychology (and no, I am not a Scientologist).
5) Vintner's Luck sounds interesting, yet another book to add to my ever growing list, in return if you want a story where the Snake is a good guy, try Harlan Ellison's "Deathbird Story". Very interesting writer, very fun story.
6) As for whether Heaven would be boring, depends how trapped into your being you are. Imagine living in a constant state of amazement, lets see, imagine seeing the Grand Canyon, or Yosemite, or Ayer's Rock, or Chartes Cathedral for the first time. Do you remember that sense of grandeur and awe? Imagine feeling that way every second of your life. Pure manic with nary a bout of depressive.

I said "technically". Catholics are generally less individualistically oriented than protestant religions, and this applies to the afterlife. The less one believes in our individual souls residing in heaven, the closer God becomes the Godhead.

Though on this I will confess this is more my opinion than a hard fact. But a lot of Catholic mystics and intellectuals have talked about a "union" with God, and that is what the Godhead is.

It's not a "hive mind". It's complete and total understanding and empathy of all things in the universe. Don't knock it until you have tried it :-)

But yeah, I sympathize with you on that point. The idea of sitting around forever praising god (which is what most christians seem to think you do) never really appealed to me.

Ignorance is not a defense, neither in law nor in the Bible. A child doesn't know good from evil either, but do you not punish them if they disobey you? Same basic principle.

There was nothing particularly special about the tree, it wasn't the fruit that provided knowledge, but the act of defiance necessary for both Adam and Eve to eat from it, despite being told not to eat it. That decision, that act of defiance, was the manifestation of Free Will, of humans deciding that they wanted to decide things for themselves. Once they did that all things followed, both good and bad, because that is the only way we can truly have free will. If god eliminated pain and suffering, then there isn't really free will, we have to accept the consequences of our desire to have free will, for good and for bad.

No problem, as long as I have time, I never mind spouting off. Pure Land Buddhism is very different from other forms of Buddhism because it is far more based on faith. It promises the follower who recites a certain manta with complete faith in Amida, rebirth and everlasting life in the "western paradise" can be achieved. Buddhism previously had never been about such the survival of the individual in paradise, so the concept had to come from somewhere. Given the timeframe of when Pure Land was invented (somewhere from 180-420 CE), it seems more likely that it was through contact with Christianity that this occurred. The state where Pure Land seems to have evolved is called Gandhara. Located roughly in Afghanistan, this kingdom was conquered by Alexander the Great and had a long standing relationship with the other Greek territories. After being conquered by Kushans it became the international headquarters for Buddhism, spreading it into China. It is not only possible that Christian missionaries went there, it literally is impossible to believe they weren't there before Pure Land was formed. There is even the legend of St. Thomas stating that he went to "India" (Gandhara is often said to "be in India" - the famous Japanese animation "Journey to the West" even had this as the opening theme.

As for Godhead, think of it as a non-personified view of God. In Buddhism this is called Nirvana. Basically it is the ultimate goal of all life to once again join with the godhead, our separation from it is what explains all the suffering in the world.

Funny you mentioning Campbell, I had just recommended him in your previous email.

It has been hacked a lot so they are trying to keep it simple, too many exploits in the fun stuff you can add to pages.

Reverse actually, since the second tree in Genesis predates Christianity. If you want a fuller description I would suggest Joseph Campbell's "Power of Myth" series (or the book version of the PBS special), but Christ is more than just a metaphor for the second tree, he is the fulfillment of the promise of the Garden of Eden: his Crucifixion and the spilling of his blood (represented by baptism) is what washes away the taint of "original" sin, and allows one true immortality.

It does kind of blow but for some things it is still the best source of information unfortunately...

Ah, no. I think I get where you are going, and I would say that no, Buddhists are not Gnostics. While I believe that Gnosticism did borrow heavily from Buddhism (and Hinduism), it is something very different because of the infusion of neo-Platoism, Judaic and Christian thought, as well as proto-Zorastrian thought.

Buddhism has various different sects, and what these sects have believed have changed overtime. They have very different beliefs (one of the major sects is something called Pure Land Buddhism, which I am absolutely convinced is a Buddhist form of Christianity), and some have and others do not have the concept of a God. Most, though, have some sort of belief in the "Godhead", though the Buddhist version differs from the Western version of the Godhead (Catholics technically believe in the Godhead, it is also the goal of Gnosticism and of the Kabbalah).

As for what I practice, I tend to practice the religion in front of me: when I am in Japan and visit a Shinto temple I pray to the Kami, when I visit a Buddhist temple I pray to whatever the Temple is dedicated to (Amida, Kannon, etc), when I see a beautiful cathedral, I will pray to Jesus and God, but then again it isn't like I go out of my way to either attend or ignore these places. I think that sort of explains what I am :-)

Jesus isn't a contradiction, basically he is the second tree from the Garden of Eden, the first, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was what the apple was, the second was the Tree of Immortality, while God denied it to Adam and Eve at that time, Jesus was the offer. But that is another story.

As for Buddhist monks answering questions, they won't. "The Way that can be Spoken is not the True Way" as Taoism goes. You can just explain enlightenment to someone, you can only nudge them in the right direction (what IS the sound of one hand clapping).

Thank you for your kind words. To answer, no I don't have a CR account, this is the only place I talk about animation (though I do post under this id elsewhere).

I am not Buddhist, but I have a great interest in most things religious and like to know as much as I can about all religions. As for the hair, while most monks do shave their heads, there are some who let their hair grow unrestrained, in both cases the important thing is not to have vanity about one's hair (or lack of). While the idea of a monk shaving their head is fairly universal, most statues of the bodhisattva have hair
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Samantabhadra.jpg

Though I would say the real reason is just because he looks "cooler" that way :-)