If you consider the advice given in all three of the tomes you’ve mentioned (in your multiply-posted posting) to be mutually exclusive, then you, sir, are the worst kind of fool–that being the kind who delights in his ignorance.
Actually i hear Cherubim are quite fierce angels, and not those cute little babies with petit wings people think they are. I also hear they’re at the top of the angelic hierarchy or something :).
An interesting concept I heard a couple of years ago regarding Heaven and what if your ex-wife/hubby/boss/antagonist were there? It certianly wouldn’t be paradise knowing that this person who rubbed you the wrong way were sharing eternity with you. And just because they were a prick to you doesn’t disqualify them for wings and harp duty.
Then a caller called up and said that her religion ( I think it was Episcopalian (sp?) said that they learned when you die because there was no pain or suffering in Heaven, you essentially lose your earth memories upon entering the Pearly Gates.
Lemme take this discussion a little bit farther. What if a guy was raised from a young age to be a hit man. Came from a family of hit men, grew up to be one and was a very good one. Now, society and moral laws say that is wrong, but this guy never felt any remorse on his actions and did his job well. Because he does not believe what he does for a living to be wrong, would not he be allowed into heaven? Isn’t hell for those who realize their actions are wrong?
This is disturbing!!! I meant to post that item once, not a dozen times or so! This must have been an accident—that I accidentally pushed a key causing my message to be posted over and over several times!
To the moderator: Is there any way to be all of the copies of my message deleted except for one?
To the Teeming Millions who saw my message here posted over and over like that: I’M SORRY!!!
To Monty: I can do without your name-calling here, Sir. What I did was an accident. what YOU did is adding insult to injury!! 
No, Dougie; what I did was point out a fact. That fact being your explicit admission that you have dismissed out of hand something because of your preconceived opinion of its source. Grab a dictionary and look up the word “fact.” For extra credit, peruse in the same dictionary its entries for “prejudice” and “ignorance.”
{{To the moderator: Is there any way to be all of the copies of my message deleted except for one?}}
Yep, there is a way. However, it seems that this is a board problem, and the tech guys need to look at it to determine what happened. If I delete the posts, then there’s no record of them. I’ve sent a letter to the tech folks, and maybe we’ll get an answer to the problem. Then I can and will remove the extra posts, if this thread is still active.
I apologize to everyone about not deleting the extra posts, but I want the techs to look at the problem NOW, and maybe prevent it in the future.
Lynn/SDStaff Lynn
For the Straight Dope
ARG220 wrote:
Oh, now I see. Your deity will give you a permanent cocaine high, therefore you won’t care about anything bad.
If that’s the case, why would he bother making heaven into the paradise that you envision? Even if it was one huge lake of boiling lead, and the “saved” people were cast into it, they’d still be happy. So who cares what it looks like?
Aura:
LOL. Excellent point! Go to heaven and get stoned for eternity!
I used to worry about Newt. Then I started worrying about the fact that the sun stopped producing neutrinos in the early '80s, indicating that its internal fusion process had stopped. But that was too scary, so now I worry about fashion.
ARG220 wrote:
Explain, please, how the deity who is in heaven can experience sadness and sorrow, then. Or don’t you recall that little bit of the Bible?
Monty: As I already explained to Snarkberry, we are not God. And contrary to Mormon beliefs, we are not ever going to be little gods either. There is not one passage in the Bible that says this. There are verses that say we are joint heirs with Jesus, and that we’re His bride, or that we are called the sons of God, but NOT that we are little gods.
Adam
Arg:
Wow, that was a total non-answer! Monty asks you a question, you attack his faith.
Fascinating.
I used to worry about Newt. Then I started worrying about the fact that the sun stopped producing neutrinos in the early '80s, indicating that its internal fusion process had stopped. But that was too scary, so now I worry about fashion.
Boy, you guys haven’t read any of the Chick tracts yet, have you? They’ll CONVINCE you that hell is a very warm place indeed.
I HAVE read quite a few of the Chick tracts; even one in Spanish whose English edition I never saw. But all I get from them is the familiar “hellfire” doctrine the Protestant churches, and others, have held to for centuries.
Now, Monty I will attempt to address your point objectively, now that I feel less embarrassed about that one posting appearing so many times.
As I have been able to perceive, the Koran says that Muhammad was given a dispensation as God’s seventh prophet, the others, I believe, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Solomon and Jesus. The Koran, however, says God has no son, but, of course, in the New Testament Jesus is called the Son of God (Luke 3:38, for example). As for the Book of Mormon, I posted a message here, admittedly sketchy, concerning similarities–verbatim passages–between one of the Books of Mormon and the Bible (Malachi). I apologize for not bringing this information to the Message Board earlier, but here it is: 3 Nephi 24 and 25 match Malachi 3 and 4. I have, of course, my own copy of the Book of Mormon, as well as several editions of the Bible and, Strong’s Concordance, likely one of the most thorough Bible reference works ever. I also have “Pearl of Great Price”; in its “Articles of Faith,” No. 8, it says: “We accept the Bible as the word of God so far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the ‘Book of Mormon’ to be the Word of God.”
I brought this up because, unlike the Bible, for which ancient texts and versions abound, there is (can you contradict this?)no equivalent equivalent textual support for the Book of Mormon.
Oops, sorry–“equivalent” appears twice. And I thank the moderator for acknowledging my question. 
Sure, Dougie, I’ll address what you just posted above. What you’ve discussed is the geography of the Bible, plenty of fictional works contain references to Jerusalem, Rome, Nazareth, and a few other places too. However, what I mentioned was the – stay with me here – advice on living contained in all three texts. I’d have thought that was self-evident what with my posting that I considered the Koran to be pure fiction but still a valuable tome.
Next, as to God having a son: the Jewish Bible – you know, the Pentateuch – explicitly states in the section commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments that God is solitary. Now why do you suppose the Jews of Jesus’ time got so bent out of shape when he was called the son of God?
Now your first posting above about the Book of Mormon’s divisions actually touched on one of my favourite subjects, and one which I’m happy to discuss with anyone: Versification.
For the uninitiated, Versification is the practice of dividing what’s considered to be Holy Writ by whatever religion into books, chapters, and verses. The Roman Catholic and Protestant versions of the Bible have some differences, and the varying translations into other languages versify the Bible differently than any of the English translations.
Another intersting thing to me is that the LDS and RLDS churches versify both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants differently. I find the RLDS versification of the D&C to be the most logical I’ve encountered: the paragraphs are numbers and the sentences within the paragraphs are lettered, just like a subparagraph should be.
I’ve encountered folks who think the verse divisions themselves are ordained by God. This also is a “hot topic” for some of the fundies.
To monty: I guess this is the crux of the matter. Your point seems to be: by dint of the First Commandment, the concept of “Son of God” is not acceptable, or rather, the two ideas are mutually exclusive. Well, I don’t agree.
You may want to see where it says in the Koran (the Ali translation, anyway, and right now I don’t have the citation): “O Jesus son of Mary! Didst thou say, ‘Worship me and my mother as god in derogation of God’? And Jesus will say, ‘Glory to thee! Never could I say (what I had no right to say).’”
So I disagree with you here, that “Son of God” conflicts with the First Commandment; you may want to compare this with the eighth chapter of Proverbs; Psalm 82:6; and the passage from Daniel where a FOURTH person was seen in the fiery furnace. Jesus even alluded to Psalm 82:6, after he riled the Jews by saying, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).