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."