Quote Originally Posted by TheShadow. View Post
And as far as you being screwed, not necessarily. As I often tell pepole when they try to pin me down about who will go to heaven, that is a management decision. I can actually point to Bible verses that indicate that everyone will be given a second chance to make a informed decision about following God, which really drives a lot of people nutty.
Which verses are those? I would have thought the First Commandment pretty much settled it.

However, a great many religions don't actually hold that you won't go to Heaven unless you "believe" right; their position is that what matters is that you lived a virtuous life, who you prayed to is a secondary or even lower matter.

Following the "right" religion might give you useful pointers as to the approved kind of virtue (whether to rub blue mud into your navel on the Solstices or the Equinoxes), but if you get it right by pure inspiration, you qualify just like a True Believer.

I understand, but if you examine all of the evidence you might find that that book has been proven to have existed essentially unchanged from a much earlier time than most believe, and is actually pretty reliable as far as things that can be checked.
As a matter of interest, which excluded books of the Apocrypha do you consider part of this unchanged and accurate book, and which of the ones that were removed from it within recorded history were never part of it?

Are you aware that some of the "things that can be checked" are the Roman records of the history of Judea, and they show no record of, among other things, the census that supposedly took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, or the Massacre of Innocents? (To name only the events large enough, from the point of view of the Imperial government, to have certainly been worth recording.)

Enquiring minds want to know.