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From: afo@pucc-k (Flidais(finder of lost beasties))
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: morals, and the low correlation with religion
Message-ID: <453@pucc-k>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 23:13:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: pucc-k.453
Posted: Tue Oct 16 23:13:38 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Oct-84 06:06:42 EDT
Organization: Society for the Consumption of Marsupials, Castrovalva
Lines: 52

(watch where you point that cuisinart!)

Random thoughts on religion, morality and the like....


About five years back (when I was a much nicer person than I am now), a friend
of mine who had recently 'seen the light' came to visit.  In between playing
rather loud Swedish gospel music on my stereo, she tried to, ahem, convert me.
Among her arguments were; even though I had the 'strongest set of morals she
had ever seen' (I told you it was a long time ago) I would most certainly
burn in hell because I had not accepted jesus christ as my personal saviour.
Now, my first response was that since she was a guest at my place, I really
didn't need the hassle.  Also, I thought that the christian group has a
rather bizarre set of criterion for saving people.  When I asked her if a 
child in India who had never heard of her saviour, and died without ever havingheard of her saviour, would burn in hell, she said yes.	When I asked her if
a Buddhist monk, never having harmed anyone in his life would burn in hell,
she said yes.  Amazing.  You can burn in hell for not being in the right place
at the right time....


A long, long time back (when I was even nicer), the kids in the neighborhood
and I would play games in the street at night (kick the can, four-square).
Anyway, about every May, we would be deluged with students from the local
baptist high school.  They apparently had to 'save' x number of people to
graduate from the high school.	These people didn't even have any concept of
what they were doing.  They just wandered up, asked if we knew that when we
died, it we were going to hell or heaven, and if we had accepted jesus christ
in our lives.  It got to be a game to see how many times we were going to be
saved in a given month.

Then again, this church was known for giving away shetland ponies to the 
children who brought in the most friends for sunday school.


Well, the jist of this is that the fundamentalist movement appears to have
a rather odd idea of what you need to be a *good* person.  Apparently 
inherent morality isn't worth anything.  It is the acceptance of *their*
god into your life which makes all the difference.  They qualify this 
arguement bythe supposition that those who are 'saved' will naturally act
better and nicer than those who haven't been saved (holy albeginsian, batman!).It appears, in their frenzy to 'save' souls (is that like plaid stamps?), they
have gotten their own morality distilled into a mere meaningless chanting of
words.

maybe instead, to try and prove what a difference it has made in their lives,
they might try following the tenets of Zoroaster (a well known non-christian),
'good thoughts, good words, good deeds'.

Think about it......

Laurie Sefton
{decvax,ihnp4,harpo,allegra}!pur-ee!pucc-k!afo
But honey, I need something I can use around the office