tells me that you were being raised Catholic. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong there, but you (and anyone else reading this or thinking about this issue) needs to understand what's going on here.
What were you taught about good people who were never baptized?
I was raised Catholic, and when it was explained to me that no matter how good a person was, if they'd never accepted Jesus Christ and all that stuff, they could never possibly go to heaven, I knew there was something fundamentally wrong.
Which is why I think that all religion is pure crap. Even the most "liberal" of Christian religions (and I'm not at all prepared to deal with other religions in this discussion) come down to the base of "Our belief is the correct one." Essentially they all say that other beliefs are wrong. There are lots of nuances and parsing of stuff, but in the end, "Our belief is the correct one" wins out.
What's wrong with other beliefs, how other beliefs shake out, what God might think of other beliefs, how far away from *our* core beliefs can one stray, and so on and so forth are NEVER dealt with. Just, "Our belief is the correct one."
This is only a slice of why I have so little respect for conventional religion. Why I have no patience with any belief system. Why arguments about faith vs works mean zero to me. Why nothing at all can convince me that your specific beliefs are the One True Belief.
Perhaps the basic question you should all be asking yourself is this: Why would God give a flying fuck about what you believe, how you worship it (him if you insist on a gendered pronoun) or why it (he) should ever get involved in your personal life?
Do you have any clue how truly vast the Universe is? Do a bit of research and come back here.
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