I don’t think I’m alone when I say this, but I unlocked the next level of love when I had children. I loved my parents, siblings and wife, but not in the same altruistic way that I love my kids. If a doctor told me that one of my kids needed a heart transplant and my heart would fit, it would take me about two seconds of deliberation to decide to rip the thing out…

The mainstream Christian tradition has been for most of the Church’s history that “unbelievers”, as defined by their acceptance of Grace and/or their actions toward others, will suffer eternal torment. Essentially, if union with God is unending heavenly bliss, then rejection of/by God is hellfire and torment forever. I’ve already posted about the idea that everyone will be reconciled with God (a.k.a. Christian Universalism) eventually. But I also struggled with the question, “what’s the point” if everybody ends up in “heaven” anyway…

Let’s tackle one more notion that seems to empower Atheists: That religion is the cause of most (or all) wars or violence. It’s a pretty ubiquitous comment, but one that doesn’t hold a lot of water. To condemn Christianity as the primary cause of conflict, you’d probably have to go back five or six centuries to the Inquisition, and as the main reason for a war, you’d have to go back seven or eight centuries to the Crusades. You might say that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were religiously motivated, given that the two sides identify themselves as Roman Catholic and Protestant, but in all reality that designation refers far more to allegiance to the British Crown or Irish autonomy than it does to belief in the transubstantiation of the Eucharist, or the role of Grace in salvation (for example)…

If you believe, or even if you don’t know if you believe, what are you doing about it? Maybe you’re one of the majority of North Americans that believe in a “Higher Power”, but are also one of the majority of North Americans that are not religiously committed. If you acknowledge that there could be a Super-Reality, isn’t this a pretty profound statement that behoves further investigation? …