I'm with John on that, Joe. Belief in the way you present it is utterly respectable and valid. Grace, mercy peace and love are all there for the taking in the atheistic and paganistic world too, though. Sadly, many opportunities are lost for taking 'em. It is there in the faith world, but I don't envy your task in having to unpick them from all that doctrine. I've just come straight from watching a documentary about the thousands of stillborn babies who were not allowed by Catholic theology to be buried in consecrated ground, and who now lie in unmarked mass graves outside cemetery perimeter fences and in bogland. Separated after death from their families on earth and then in the afterlife as well by being consigned to limbo (at least the Church has made a little progress there, though the funeral rites for unbaptised babies are still different from those of the baptised). What else but a male-dominated, authoritarian, unchristian organisation such as the Catholic church could come up with such wickedness and cruelty. If I were still religious, the one wicked thing that would cause me to join any religion other than Catholicism is the doctrine of original sin. A God who decrees that for his flock can go and... finish that one yerself!