perhaps there is hope for Change where it matters...

[acroyear]

Op-Ed Columnist - Heaven for the Godless? - NYTimes.com:

Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.

And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.

What on earth does this mean?

One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. As Alan Segal, a professor of religion at Barnard College told me: “We are a multicultural society, and people expect this American life to continue the same way in heaven.” He explained that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus.

Comments

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. How any sane person believes that a neighbor who is basically decent and kind deserves to burn eternally for following the wrong faith - or loving the wrong person, or failing to be submissive enough to one's spouse or one's liege lord or one's God, or for eating the wrong foods, or whatever - is beyond me.
But then, I'm a Universalist (more than I am a Unitarian). Universal salvation is our core dogma. That and "coffee and cake after services."

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is, I think very very few people - only those completely off the deep end - would advocate even a day of torture in this world for the same "crimes" their God punishes with _eternal_ torture.
Either they don't really believe what they're preaching (since it's safely in the afterlife) or they believe that God is - and should be, since they still worship and adore him - crueler, more unreasonable, and more arbitrary than the worst of human governments.

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

Yeah especially for stupid shit like shaving, eating pork or shrimp, or being a Doctor and working on Sunday. I agree with Chris Rock in that I seriously doubt if a God or Gods exist they're sitting around letting serial murderers into Heaven because they ate right or only killed people Monday through Friday.

It amuses me when the wingnuts whine about moral relativism. But they're perfectly happy to allow our government to freaking kidnap and torture people - including American citizens.

Not sure I understand the whole "atheists are going to heaven too" thing. I realize UUs believe in universal salvation but it seems to me that if everybody gets to be in the cool club then it's not all that cool. My belief is that when you die, *click* you're gone. But even if I'm wrong (I actually hope that I am) and the UU's are right, why would whatever universal mind controlling this place want someone who didn't believe hanging out with him/her/it?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Uh, if you believe and are so convinced there is a heaven, then atheists friends of yours are eligible for it, even though they don't believe in it. In short, the afterlife would be "proof" that atheists were wrong (exactly that proof we can't/don't have while here on earth).

Now, Jesus is clear that not everyone gets into the "cool club", but the disagreements (as Life of Brian so clearly and almost effortlessly shows, "follow the gourd!") are what he means by "follow me" or "through me".

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

You're referring to the faith vs works salvation thing that even Christians can't agree on. They've been arguing about that for the entirety of their religion's existence.