Stormin Mormon wrote:
I respect your traditions. But, tradition isn't enough. Needs to have
power, too. Jesus was heard to say "I am the way and teh truth and
the life, no man cometh unto th father but through me" and I do
belive that.


I didn't say tradition was enough. I emphasized righteous conduct. The sages
teach there are four things on which the human mind should not dwell: What
came before, what comes after, what is above, and what is below. The reason
behind this admonishment is simple: we can't do anything about any one of
them. The streets of heaven may be paved with gold. Or mud. Whatever they're
paved with, that's God's province, not mine.

But we can make this a better world. Today. If you're hungry, I can make you
a sandwich. If you're tired, I have a spare couch.

I ask you, how much closer would we be today toward a cure for cancer, or
world peace, or ignoring Lady GaGa, if some really great thinkers of the
past had not frittered away much of their intellect on questions such as
"How many angles can dance on the head of a pin?"

As for your quotation, Jesus may have been mistaken, exaggerating,
mistranslated, or simply misquoted by the anonymous author of the Book of
John. Don't forget, the Book of John was written about AD 90 and was
certainly not a contemporaneous account (it was, probably, a redaction of an
oral tradition - there's that word again).

Aside:
You've heard of Occam's Razor? It's the notion that of two competing
explanations, the simpler is more likely to be preferred. Interestingly, in
Biblical exegesis, the more COMPLICATED of two possibilities is more likely
the truth or the earlier rendition. Quite simple to explain: A copyist
looking at a passage says to himself: "Nobody will understand this. I'll
just simplify it." And there we have it.