Religion

[vrikasatma]

Hi there, sister
I'm not sure where I stand relationally with Anpu, but He's a great friend. I've seen Him laugh off wild s*** that would turn your hair white

Okay, Heaven, Hell and Karma. I'll do the last first.
I come from the Bay Area. There, karma is a big buzzword and the problem is, they're not clear on the concept. It's the old Abrahamic conditioning, that karma means divine retribution and they're all self-righteous and judgemental about it. If something bad happens to you, oh, it must mean that you did something bad in the past or a past life so you deserve it, you rotten evil human you (and yes, I have met some very unpleasant people who talked like that — one exceedingly arrogant jerk went around saying that it was Cliff Burton's karma to die the way he did because his band's lyrics dealt with dark and violent concepts and he had it coming).

No.

Hindus explain karma as the law of cause and effect: if you stroke a cat's back and ears, your karma is to hear it purr. If you tease a dog your karma is to get bitten. If you crush grapes and add water and let it sit for a year or two, wine is the karma (and by extension, drunkenness, hangovers and nice clean arteries). It's not God punishing you for past sins, real or imagined. So yeah, I can understand when people get disillusioned with the concept of karma, because they've been misled by some seriously screwed up people.

Heaven and Hell.
I believe in them. I don't necessarily defer them to an afterlife, they can be experienced — transiently — while you're still alive. They are states of being. When I was with my abusive boyfriend many years ago — there were no pitchforks, there were no red-skinned guys with barbed tails and horns, there were no unquenchable fires, but I was in Hell. When my horse hugs and kisses me, there are no harps, no halos, but I consider that a Heavenly state.
BTW, I refer to a pleasant afterlife as The Summerland
And I believe in reincarnation, too. I'm hoping in my next life I'll have a double-jointed body — I'm lobbying Khnemu for one — and I'm convinced one of my more recent past lives was as a wolf

[Anubis]

So, what religion are you? And/or what do you believe in?
Keep it clean...GO!

Offically, I am Catholic. My dad makes me go to mass every Sunday and all.
Though, I really dont know what to think religion wise. I am not a very religious person in general. I guess I have a mix of beliefs, some christian stuff, and some paganish. Forget the term for those who dont know/have a particular religion...started with an A I think.
And I have some Therian beliefs as well. I just dont know for sure if I could be one or not. May be a lill wolfie inside Leaning towards reincarnation I think....gah, I dont know Guess I'll find out in the end

i'm LDS or some call us Mormons,

No, i have 1 mother so does every one in our church! and we are NOT a cult!! say we are and i'll rip your throat out!!!

[Renorei]

No, i have 1 mother so does every one in our church! and we are NOT a cult!! say we are and i'll rip your throat out!!!

Jeezum Petes. Must be some hardcore Mormon discrimination going on over there.

Are you Mormons the people who take long spiritual journeys (frequently in pairs, on bycicles with backpacks) when you come of age? I can't remember what religion that is, but I've always thought it was cool.

[Anubis]

No, i have 1 mother so does every one in our church! and we are NOT a cult!! say we are and i'll rip your throat out!!!

Jeezum Petes. Must be some hardcore Mormon discrimination going on over there.

Are you Mormons the people who take long spiritual journeys (frequently in pairs, on bycicles with backpacks) when you come of age? I can't remember what religion that is, but I've always thought it was cool.

UUUUUUUUUUUH!? what where did you here that? it has to be some other group cause its not us LDS

[Renorei]

UUUUUUUUUUUH!? what where did you here that? it has to be some other group cause its not us LDS

hmm....I don't know who it is then.

[vrikasatma]

It's the Mormons. We see them all the time. It's "Mission." I forget his name offhand, but the q-back that replaced Joe Montana is a Mormon, but he didn't have to go on Mission. He was a star quarterback for the 49ers and the church elders considered that Mission enough.

Side note: Did you know the Amish let their kids go out into the world at age 18? They say, "Go out, you have three years, see the world and if at the end of those three years you don't want to come back, we understand." I'm told 80% of them come back. We actually have a campful of Amish at Burning Man; they're actually very well-suited for the Playa because they have community and volunteerism and the concept of gifting down, better than a lot of us "sophisticates." We have to re-learn to work with each other, they never lost it. They're better at connecting and working with people. We could all take a lesson from that.

[Silverclaw]

Yeah, I saw a documentury about that. Was called 'The Devils Playground'. Amish teens are some of the wildest actually

[Set]

I've heard some horror stories about the Amish before. This one was even on the news. One girl was getting the hell beat out of her by her brothers and father, but since the Amish don't have phones she couldn't tell anyone and had to live with the abuse for years.

And yeah, Amish teens are wild. Their parents actually let them drink and smoke all they want. Supposedly it's to get all of that out of their systems before they get older. There's alot of Amish up in Ohio and my grandmother lives up there, so I hear about them on occasion.

[Anubis]

yea, i watched opera (don't ask my why(long story)) it shown the amish teens getting high and getting laid, and stuff. man i thought the kids at my school were party animals. (most of them have hang overs in the morning)

[NarnianWolfen]

I don't know if I have a religion, per se. I don't believe in organized religion. But I'm starting to have faith. And I believe in fate, after a way. Life's lessons. I think that things happen for a reason...I think that as long as you're a good person, you'll be alright. I believe in karma. I don't believe in shoving your views down someone else's throat, or trying to control what others think. I loved Narnia's Aslan, the Christ figure. There were no churches. No one was forced to think of him or to sing his praise. He was just good. The lessons he had to teach were deep, and reading the books of Narnia made me want to be a better person. And you didn't have to believe in Aslan to be a good person. A character could still be loved and appreciated if they didn't talk about Aslan and declare allegiance to him. Do I believe in heaven or hell? No. Not in the direct sense. In the Bible, all sins are seen as equal. To lie about stealing all the duckies is just as bad as killing someone. So to punish a particularly bad person over a somewhat friendly person seems off to me. I know my morals, and I know what I feel is right and wrong. I also believe myself a therian..to me, that means a human who has a very close souldeep affinity with a particular animal, namely, Wolf. Wolf is my friend, and when I howl, when I growl, when I feel Wolf's presence, my soul is soothed. I don't worship anyone, but I do admire them, and try to appreciate them. I don't know where we go when we die...whether we go to another place, or whether we are reincarnated, or whether we just...blow out as does a candle. Dying terrifies me because of this...I don't want to go out and never feel or think again. Desperately, I don't. I know I love living, and I love the wind in my face and the touch of the rain and sun through a forest. I try to forgive those that wrong me. The foolishness of my fellow humans saddens me, but I think it even worse to hate the whole of humanity just Because. Nothing could be worse for our society. That is my religion.

Sorry for the spam. x.x

[Set]

I have a few questions for the Christians here. I don't mean for any of this to be offensive, so please don't take it as an attack on any of you. I did go to a Christian school when I was younger but if I asked questions even remotely like these they'd beat me with a paddle. Ah, the joys of private school... *ahem* Anyway...

I admit I stole this first one from a comedian by the name of Carlos Mencia. But he does have a point.

My priest tells me God doesn't want me to have sex with my sister. But God created Adam and Eve, and only Adam and Eve. They had two sons and three daughters. So how are we here? Someone had to bone their sister!

What's up with that? I mean really... Just one of the many things about Christianity that doesn't make sense to me.

Anyone remember the Witch Trials? Well if it's a sin to kill someone, wouldn't those people just have been condemning themselves to hell because of hanging people and burning them at the stake? Not to mention the torture those poor people had to go through. Being thrown in rivers, poked with needles and the like... Apparently hell isn't that bad if they were willing to do all of that just to keep people in line. (On a side note, I'd recommend a book called Witch Child to anyone who'd like to read a good story about a girl accused of being a witch.)

Why is a group of Christians called a flock? To me the word flock suggests that Christians are sheep. The sheep is a dumb domesticated animal that only knows how to follow the crowd and is there to be sheared. Before it gets slaughtered anyway. I guess the "sheared" part would apply to those who go to church. After all if they demand 10% of your pay check just so you can go hear someone speak about God then you're definately getting ripped off. And don't give me that "it pays the bills so we can still go to church" crap. I live in the Bible Belt of the south and there's churches every ten feet or so.

One church even added an expansion recently because they supposedly had "too many members". With all of the churches around here couldn't they have just gone to another one? And it's not like the expansion was little either. They had to make this huge building with this fancy looking tower thingy. That must've cost them at least one million dollars. Like my mother said: "How many people could they have helped with all that money? What a waste..."

Why is it when I get into an argument with a Christian over something and the subject of pyramids comes up (I don't even know how that happens, especially since most of the time it's over something that has absolutely nothing to do with it...) that they always go for the slaves bit? It makes them so mad when I point out to them that the pyramid builders weren't ever slaves. It's amusing. They try to make me look like an idiot by quoting bible passages and such, but I always point out the flaws and then they get so frustrated they pretty much put their hands over their ears and go "LALA CAN'T HEAR YOU!". Why so childish eh?

Why must Christianity in general demonise everything they don't like? Even I have been subjected to that. I can't tell you how annoying it is when they call me a demon and pull out a cross (or make a cross with their fingers if they don't have one). I always step towards them and say "You think that's going to save you?" They usually run away at this point.

The bible is supposed to be the word of God right? Then why are there so many versions of it? Wouldn't it be a bad thing to change the word of God? And why are there so many conflicting messages in there? Why do so many people take it all literally anyway? I mean it's more a collection of stories to teach people morals than actual history. And if they take it literally then wouldn't all the conflicting stuff confuse them?

How many Christians actually know what the word bible means? If you think you know, tell me. If not then ask and I'll tell you.

[WolvenOne]

I should note that the entire Adam and Eve thing, well, a lot of people take it seriously but it's highly likely that it's a metaphor.

As for the witch trials, they shouldn't have happened, though I take no responsibility for that considering that A: My particuler religion had nothing to do with it and B: My particuler religion wasn't even in existence at the time.

Besides, if we get into "what religion is responsible for what," we'll be here all day. EVERY religion has had horrible stuff done in it's name, almost without fail. That doesn't mean anything about the religion, but rather it's a reflection of the culture.

[Scott Gardener]

Since I'm not Christian myself, I'm not neccessarily qualified to answer, but I can extrapolate, as exposure to Christian theology is essentially unavoidable in southern Texas.

The sisterly love thing:

Presumably God made mandates to ensure genetic diversity, but until genetic diversity existed, such mandates were not logically meaningful.

That Burning Times thing:

Even most fundamentalists today would consider the rampant execution of suspected witches to be evil, and therefore sinful. Note that the people burned were most likely more often than not other Christians rather than Wiccans. Some might have employed Wiccan principles or other forms of hidden, word-of-mouth knowledge, such as herbal contraception, but most probably just did something that looked suspicious or annoyed the wrong person. In any event, those who believe in Hell probably do expect the witch-killers to have ended up there.

The flock thing:

The sheep / shephard metophor is a popular one from 19th century Christianity, and may trace back considerably further. Its contemporary connotations of herd mentality is unintentional, but fellow Pagans see it as an open invitation for wisecracks.

The expanding versus steady state church thing:

Churches are not going to send members elsewhere any more than Better Dodge is going to send a customer to another car dealership just because they don't have a red Magnum on the lot. They want members. It's what they're for.

The pyramids thing:

We all know that they were really built by servants of the Go'uld, who only recently were defeated by the Ja'far. The Go'uld were, of course, false gods, as only the Aurai speak the truth.

That demonizing every single thing thing:

Fundamentalism is a viral mime that reproduces itself, and to do so, it must brainwash its host. It does so by the emotion of fear. Other Christians resent this perversion of their religion into a molevolent form, just like most of us werewolf fans are put out by the marketing department responsible for Cursed.

The various distributions of The Bible:

The Fundamentalists will insist that all versions are equally correct (except, perhaps, the notorious "adulterous Bible" that accidently omitted "not" from one of the ten commandments when it went to print in 1632.) If you try to point out differences of interpretation, such as how King James insisted on translating "poisoner" as "witch" in the phrase about "suffering a witch to live", the counter-argument is La La La, I can't hear you.

More rational individuals are tending to favor retranslation efforts from the original texts, thus offering as an alternative to the King James Bible such versions as the New International Version. Technically, none of the Bibles out there are original, except for a collection of ancient works in Hebrew, which are incomplete.

It should also be noted that the Bible has numerous "deleted scenes," such as the Apocrypha, which explains such plot discrepancies as Adam and Eve appearing simultaneously, followed by God creating Eve from Adam. (The first woman was not Eve, but Lilith, as most Sarah McLachlan and Glenn Danzig fans know.) These texts were omitted when a committee in the first century decided what was or wasn't canon, sending some earlier Hebrew concepts such as reincarnation onto the cutting room floor.

As a final note, contemporary Fundamentalist Christianity is a simplified version of what was previously believed. Here are some changes that have happened:

1. People didn't always die and become angels. Angels historically were a seperate race of beings. For that matter, people didn't die and go to Heaven, at least not indefinitely. They ultimately went to Paradise. Heaven is a term for what basically amounts to being in a transition between now and the final judgement day. Souls appearantly were sent forward in time from the moment of death to the final moment. Being outside of regular space-time was termed Heaven. The older interpretation actually kind of fits with certain models of cosmology, at least in the sense that the universe can have finite time before collapsing in on itself. The current thinking eliminates abstract concepts of time, which requires decontextualized thinking, which encourages philosophy and asking questions.

2. Wicked people didn't just die and go to Hell. They went to Purgatory, a state that was equally horrific, but finite in duration. "Sins" and imperfection could be purged in this state, and the person afterwards could then be clinically reassessed, and might be eligible for Paradise. Purgatory was eliminated, because it's so much more frightening to tell young children that it's forever and that's it. Limbo was another term for Purgatory, though descriptions of Limbo are often less horrific, and simply involve being either a ghost or just kind of stuck, like an airport when your connecting flight is cancelled.

3. The ancient Hebrew model of the Earth, with an ocean-like "firmament" in the sky and a finite, flat Earth with an ocean underneath the ground, has been rejected. Contemporary Christianity has, in spite of its attacks on evolution and other scientific principles, incorporated geology and astronomy to some degree, suggesting that Hell is located somewhere near the center of the Earth and is unfathomably hot and molten, and that Heaven is upwards, into the sky. This model ignores the questions raised by the other eight known planets of the solar system and the 100 or so discovered over the last ten years; the debate about Kuiper belt objects like Pluto and whether or not they count as planets; the core temperature of blue dwarfs, pulsars; or other good Hell candidates, such as inside the event horizon of a black hole. (A movie did pursue that line of thinking, however.)

[WolvenOne]

Portions of 2 and 3 are actually taught amongst the Mormon branch of Christianity. The entire "Heaven and Hell arn't permenent," thing that most of Christianity has dropped.

Mormons also believe in Resserection, not Reincarnation but rather that all people will be restored in the twinkling of an eye during the final judgment of all things. *It could be called Reincarnation since our bodies will have many of thier flaws corrected, but that term doesn't really fit.*

[vrikasatma]

I should note that the entire Adam and Eve thing, well, a lot of people take it seriously but it's highly likely that it's a metaphor.

I got my nose bitten off on another board for answering the Adam and Eve question in a similar fashion to that...

Anyway, here's what I understood when they inculcated us in parochial school. I'm not a Christian but before I converted to Paganism I did a *lot* of reading and theological self-study, asked a whole bunch of questions and did a whole bunch of thinking. I'm weird that way...

As it was explained to us, when you die, you don't go anywhere, you sleep in a kind of stasis until Judgement Day. Whenever that's supposed to go down; they didn't explain it other than "it could be tomorrow, it could be the next day, it could be anytime" but definitely agreed it was in the future.

On Judgement Day, they further said, Jesus would split the human race into two groups, the evil ones on his left and the good ones on his right. Who are the good people? Why, Christians, of course. And you've all been baptised and go to church, so you got nothing to worry about!

So once the people have been stratified, the good people all follow Jesus to Heaven and the bad, goatlike people all go to Hell because they deserve it. Heh.

That's what we were taught. Naturally, they kept things simple and didn't deal in ethical questions because we were still in our single digits, so basically we got a storybook told to us like it's fact: basic Fundamentalism. Never mind that the largest part of the Old Testament and a goodly part of the New Testament was written in Aramaic, which is a poetic language and not to be taken literally. But much of what's popularly regarded as Heaven and Hell (and Purgatory) in popular culture came from Dante Alighieri's <i>Divine Comedy</i>. The Bible says nothing about Purgatory, and as for Hell, there's no mention of torture, flames, et alia. That's from <i>l'Inverno</i>. The Bible says that Hell — <i>Sheol</i> in the Hebraic — is a place of darkness, silence and stillness; in short, it could be interpreted as the grave. In short, God doesn't resurrect you, you just die and stay that way and that's it, death is the end and no afterlife.

BTW, that's what the Kemites believed happened if you were buried without being mummified or had your grave memorialized, or if no-one mourned you. You just...cease to exist.

So, anyway, back to the Catholic Fundamentalism...being a bright kid, I went home and asked my mom, "What about the people who were born and died before Jesus came along? Are they going to Hell?" That didn't quite seem fair to me. She told me that they don't go to Hell, they go to Purgatory (again, from the Divine Comedy, not strictly in the Biblical Christian doctrine).

Purgatory: a place where you go temporarily and your sins get cleansed away and then you can go your merry way to — wherever. Okay, this could be a good thing. A round of therapeutic Boom Shiva is rarely amiss.

Now to go in a slightly different tack...I've heard the doctrine where humans were one metaphysical "race" and angels were another, so a human could never become an angel. The way we understood it, when the good people went to Heaven after Judgement Day, they became light and merged with God. As I understand it, that's what the Hindus believe, too, your ashes are scattered in the Ganga at Kashi, all your sins throughout all your lives are forgiven and you merge with Atma, the Supreme Being. Many paths, one goal, I guess.

Now here's where I get Christian doctrine stuck in my craw. So long as you seek forgiveness, and go to the sacrament of confession, your sins will be forgiven — whatever they are. In other words, you could do something like rape, torture and mutilate-murder a child but if you flagged down a priest, asked for absolution and said an Act of Contrition, then your sin would be wiped clean and you'd be reinstated into God's Love and assured Heaven. Ahhhhmmm...call me a justice fanatic, but there's something about that that makes my "That Ain't Right" light come on...

[Renorei]

My answer to many of your questions, Reilune, is as follows: Christians aren't perfect. We make mistakes too, although our mistakes are generally all the more apparent because many of us have this 'holier than thou' thing going on.

Way too many people who consider themselves Christians aren't doing so because they've actually mulled it over and chosen it as their own religion, many of them are just doing it b/c their parents and their parents before them were Christians. Sorta like the kid who goes to Duke b/c his dad did, without looking at any other colleges.

As far as the different translations of the bible go, think of it this way:

The car is black.
The vehicle is ebony.

Different word choices, but the meaning is about the same. Though I will admit there are parts of the bible where the translations are gross and misinforming, but efforts are being made to correct this. Also, it makes me mad that parts of the bible where omitted.


As to the comment about forgiveness for sins, this is basically what I've been taught. You can be forgiven for your sins in the eyes of God (only if you actually mean it though) but you are still subject to justice for your actions. So yes, God forgives you, and so should everyone else, but you are still subject to punishment, as it should be.

Some people wonder why a Christian doesn't just do horrible things and then just keeping asking for forgiveness. We Baptists believe that if a person was really a Christian, they wouldn't deliberately set out to do that in the first place. Sure, you'll still sin, and you may still sin deliberately and knowingly, but no person who sets out (before he begins the sin) and says to himself 'well, I'll just ask for forgiveness' is really a true Christian. Yeah I know that's not a perfect philosophy, but there's good chance that the part of the bible that dealt with that issue was omitted, as past religious leaders were apt to do.

I believe Christianity is a great religion, and (at least in modern times) it generally produces people that are moral, upstanding, and good for society (except for some of the more radical sects). I believe that it's the 'right' religion (or perhaps one of several right religions). And even if it's not, oh well. I'll just die, and it's over. In the words of some person whose name I don't know, "I'd rather live believing there is a God and die and find out there's not, than live believing there's not and die and find out there is."

So those are my thoughts on Christianity. I hope some of it helps. I am sorry that many of the Christians you have encountered have been the bad sort, but we aren't all bad, I promise.

[Vilkacis]

Now here's where I get Christian doctrine stuck in my craw. So long as you seek forgiveness, and go to the sacrament of confession, your sins will be forgiven — whatever they are. In other words, you could do something like rape, torture and mutilate-murder a child but if you flagged down a priest, asked for absolution and said an Act of Contrition, then your sin would be wiped clean and you'd be reinstated into God's Love and assured Heaven. Ahhhhmmm...call me a justice fanatic, but there's something about that that makes my "That Ain't Right" light come on...

I see two different issues kind of mixed together in there.

The first is antinomianism -- the idea that you can do whatever you want because you can just ask forgiveness and everything will be all right. That's definitely a red flag there -- something's wrong. The way I see it, the people who believe this are kind of missing the point as far as Godly mercy is concerned. They may say the words, but there's no true request for forgiveness there. Do you think they actually have regret for their actions if they believe it's OK to do them, so long as they say some words? Rest assured, they aren't fooling God with their empty sounds.

The second issue is the idea of justice versus mercy. Should a murderer or rapist be permitted forgiveness? Surely they should be punished, right? That's a difficult topic for most people. I can't say as I have an answer that you would find acceptable. I can say, however, that -- no matter the situation -- I would always prefer forgiveness and mercy over justice and punishment for myself. And I hope I would never begrudge the same for others.

-- Vilkacis

[vrikasatma]

I believe Christianity is a great religion, and (at least in modern times) it generally produces people that are moral, upstanding, and good for society (except for some of the more radical sects).

[Nods] This can also be said of any religion. I agree.
As a side note, I do have a bit of respect for Baptists in that their worship services are GREAT! I've never been to a revival but I've seen video and the amount of energy those things generate beats the pants off pretty much anything you'd find on the Roman Catholic side of the fence.

I just wish they'd keep their politics at home and not try to parent the rest of us...

[vrikasatma]

[NarnianWolfen]

Where will the shade of Baron Gilles de Rais go on Judgement Day? Will he be admitted to Heaven along with his lady St. Jeanne d'Arc the Maid because he asked and was shriven, or will he be condemned to stay in the grave and be forever shut out from God's grace (Hell), for what he did? More importantly, what will happen to the souls of his victims? They did no wrong, begged for mercy and were denied it, where will they go? What will they say when this guy's soul turns up in Heaven?

A little unrelated maybe, but this reminds me of a movie I saw recently with Ted Danson. He was a psychic who could see and speak to spirits, and was hired on with the police because of some insight he gave to the death of a boy a long time ago. Twenty-thirty years later, murders started to occur, and each body (each victim a young boy) were buried in a circle around the original boy, who'd been accidently shot due to a hunting accident. The ghosts of the murdered boys kept appearing before him, but he didn't know what they wanted.
In the end, it turned out to be the mother of the boy killed thirty years ago that was the murderer, who was killing the boys for her dead child, who'd never had any friends. She wanted him to have friends in death. At the end of the movie, the boys are around the psychic and the mother is with the police, when Ted Danson asks to speak to the mother. He enters, and talks to her. He tells her that the boys are not angry with her for killing them...but they want her to let her boy go. She's held onto his memory for so long, he was unable to pass into the next world, or life, with the friends she's given him..and as a plea to let her son go, each ghost hugged the woman like a mother, who came to herself and burst into tears. Ted Danson leaves the room and sees the boys around the ghost of that one they were all killed for...in death forgiving their killer, who mourned for the terrible thing she had done. It was very touching to me, and something I would never have thought of before. But the psychic said to the police officer who was asking why he looked so shocked, "They didn't just come to free Andy...but they came to free his mother, as well..."

[Renorei]

[WolvenOne]

In response to Vrikasatma

Well, again I can only speak about the religious views of a Mormon since that's what I'm most familier with. Now, that stasis thing, sounds kinda like Jahova's Witnesses to me but I cannot say conclusivly.

Now, Mormons believe that when you die, you go to what is commonly reffered to as Heaven or Hell. (We don't reffer to them as that though as that's not the proper terminalogy. Hell for example is derived from a word meaning burning land-fill, in the Bible it's meant more as a descriptive then the actual name.) Okay moving on.

Spirit Prison and Spirit Paradise are where you wait for the final judgment and all that to occur. Those whom did well on earth of course no longer need to be tested and that's why they're in paradise where-as those in prison need to spend time atoning for thier earthly crimes.

Now, when the end comes, and we Mormons believe it'll be sooner rather then later, everybody is resserected back onto Earth and they're divied up into one of 3 kingdoms. Now what is unique about Mormonism is that we believe that all even the kingdom furthest detached from God is more pleasent then Earth. Also, almost anybody is supposed to be able to get into this place, athiests, pagens, even murderers can get into this kingdom so long as they express remorse and acknowledge God

(Note: Mormons believe that people can repent even after death, though that doesn't necceserilly mean they'll get out of Hell early.) (Also I should note that non-christians will not necceserilly end up on the third tier of the Kingdom, depending on what sort of life they led they may very well end on the 2nd tier.)

Now there is a 4th eternal destination, but very few people will end up there. We reffer to it as Outer Darkness, a land completly devoid of Gods light, and the only place in existence beings completly devoid of God's light can exist. Those who end up here are those who either turned against God even before coming to earth, or whom are so bitter that they are incapable of asking Gods forgivness even in the afterlife.

For all intents and purposes it appears to be worse then hell, those cursed to exist there, lack a body and exist as a blind deaf mute entity that's only capable of experiencing anger, pain, sorrow, and regret. I'm very glad so few people will end up there because the thought of it frieghtens me and I feel that very few people deserve such a horrible fate.

Now as I've said before, this view of the afterlife works better for me. Mercy is shown to those whom have sinned as long as they've paid for thier crime and have shown remorse. Those in the middle have thier own destination, and the truly unredeemable get thier own eternal punishment that seems truely fitting.

Now, as per the statement that those whom existed before Jesus went to purgatory. Well, we Mormons don't share that view. We believe that thier sins were already atoned for by Jesus in the future, since God already knew it was going to happen.

[Aki]

[Howling Fan]

Forget the term for those who dont know/have a particular religion...started with an A I think.

I believe you're thinking of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic."
An atheist doesn't believe in a God of any sort and will not be convinced otherwise.
An agnostic is not sure if there is a God or not and is looking for further proof. S/he is open to the idea of there being a God but is not yet convinced.
Or, to put it in movie terms, Steven Spielberg has said that his movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is about a man ("Indiana Jones," a.k.a. Harrison Ford) who goes from an atheist to an agnostic.
Hope this clears that up.

[WolvenOne]

Oh and, sorry for going into long drawn-out descriptives concerning my religion. Religion actually is one of my faverite subjects and I tend t go on and on and on when it's brought up.