of suffering and the existential angst/burden of the sufferers; its attempts at understanding such things being also clearly revealed. Peter has already begun to pick up on my earlier brief remark re the 'is' versus the 'ought', which also raised the question of the Fall. He (and Shawn) crucially point out there's a world of difference between the wholesome and necessary notion of Divine Providence and the doctrine of the Fall. I think at last we are getting down to some helpful and vitally important means of truly evaluating discussion on this blog. For in the end, that's what such blog dialogue is very much about: tossing around the various means of evaluating various understandings of various experiences , and testing their robustness, bringing to the surface assumptions and the very criteria of understanding and evaluation. That's a part of the reason for my appreciation now: the increased clarity is very helpful. A few brief remarks on "orientation", since you offer them too. I've had to conclude after nearly thirty years of focused attention on this issue (together with years more of incidental observation) that the jury is well and truly out still. Aetiology/causes would appear to be multifactorial: hormonal, genetic predisposition, epigenetic, parental (especially in the early years PRE puberty), cultural fashion, et al. Christians, and notably Christian scientists and psychiatrists and social analysts, etc, will themselves have to exegete ever more deeply their own supposed professional 'ideologies' and their 'theologies', the latter which we all have, for better