My experience with Mormons was a good one as well. Two 19 year old buxom blonde hotties came round to chat and hand out pamphlets. It's pretty sneaky way to spread the faith and they did a hell of alot better in getting converts than 2 mousy guys in nice suits would have. I was going to ask them about the polygamy aspect of the faith but I lost my nerve I had to consent myself with pamphlets and the promise of a return visit; unfortunately instead of the girls 2 guys in suits showed up later in the week. Anyway on topic, I went to a Christian school for my whole school life and the faith never really sat well with me. One thing I could never reconcile is christianity's ideas of heaven and an afterlife which were supposed to be a sort of utopia (this is probably the wrong word to use in its most literal sense) where nothing bad happens. I honestly cannot see the appeal of any heaven ; even 72 virgins would get boring after a while, and the christian idea of heaven is even worse IMO than the muslim one. Without sin, conflict or struggle the idea of Heaven sounds awfully boring; I'd prefer Hell or better yet Valhalla. but even quaffing mead and fighting all day would get stale after a hundred years or so. Added to this are the inconsistencies between the New and Old Testaments. It seems to me that the old testament is Jewish, and the new is Christian; why bother including the old testament in all versions of the bible? All it does is highlight the inconsistencies between god's treatment of people across 2 time periods, the former where he is almost categorically murdering everyone who "isn't one of my people" and the latter where we're all supposed to be altruistic pacifists. With such inconsistencies it boggles my mind why so many pentecostal/evangelical denominations in America go so nuts over the question of creationism vs. evolution. You'd think it would more be the Jews who would be protesting the debunking of the creation myth considering the old testament has very little to do with Christianity as far as I can tell. And if it was Christ who was supposed to change the whole game, and shift the nature of god from being practically demonic to benevolent; why'd he leave it so late? And what happens to everyone born before Christ? I don't recall any concrete answer to this in the NIV; maybe its like Dante suggests and there are spaces in heaven (or hell) reserved for 'Virtuous Pagans'. Off topic, Mortem I was wondering about some of the historical texts you have access to. I know that many Romans had good command of Greek, the Lingua Mundi as it were, as well as Latin; I'm curious to know whether the surviving texts we have access to (Tacitus, Seuotinius, Josephus etc.) from the late republic/early empire, were they written in Greek or Latin?
