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Srry about posting multiple threads about the same thing, but everytime I try to reply to a topic (even my own) I get a database error thing.

Now for the point of this topic:

"Do they? Who says? Think about it for a moment.
I assume you mean by "religion" some sort of fellowship or intimacy with the divine. OK? Well, many religions have no such aim! You see, there are not only different religions, but quite different types of religion, with very different objectives. Here are some.
First, there are occult religions, such as animism, witchcraft, magic and some elements of the New Age. These are concerned with spirits, often evil spirits that need to be placated or manipulated. They may dwell in trees, sacred sites or people. They may belong to the ancestors or to nature. These spirits are as varied as the African witch doctor, the Mongolian shaman and the local sorcerer who seek to manipulate them. Occult religions are about spirits, not about God, let alone intimacy with Him.
Second, there are what you might call imperial religions. They are not about God either. They are about the highest political authority, which demands total allegiance - from the divine kings in Egypt and Mesopotamia, through the Caesars of the Roman empire, to the Shinto emperors of
Japan - together with Hitler, Mao and Stalin in our own day. It is interesting to notice the "divine" notes struck both by Hitler and Stalin. Stalin used to have gigantic pictures of himself projected against low-lying clouds above mass rallies, while Hitler used messianic language about himself and predicted a Reich of a Thousand Years.
Third, there are ascetic religions, such as ]ainism, Buddhism, some strands in Hinduism and all the "do it yourself" versions of Christianity. They are not about God either, but about self-renunciation. The self is renounced and mortified in order to diminish its grip and to rid the person of being tied to this world. Sometimes, as in Buddhism, it is supposed to lead, after many lives, to the final elimination of the self, which is absorbed into the impersonal One or Monad. It has nothing whatever to do with intimacy with God. Indeed, in most branches of these ascetic religions there is no God to be intimate with!
Fourth, there are what one can only call genital religions or fertility cults. They worship sex. This type of religion is very old, and very modern. It ranges from the fertility cults of the Canaanites, through the lascivious statues in many Hindu temples, through places like London's Soho and Amsterdam, to today's XXX films and videos and the astronomical sales of pornography. They too have nothing to do with God, let alone fellowship with Him.
Fifth, there are the bourgeois religions, which feed the religious instincts of the leisured classes and cost their adherents nothing apart from massive financial contributions. They are bodies like Christian Science, Spiritualism, Scientology, Theosophy and many of the self-improvement cults. They are all about man, not God and intimacy with Him.
Sixth, there are prophetic religions, which arise from the dynamic leadership and moral challenge of a great leader and tend to sweep across the world within a century of their origin. Islam, which made enormous inroads into the Middle East and North Africa within a few decades of the death of Muhammad, is one excellent example. Marxism is another. It profoundly influenced a third of the world within a few decades of Marx's death. Although it was militantly atheistic, Marxism had a passionately held creed, high ideals, self-sacrifice and clear convictions about the future in common with many religions. Its adherents would gladly die for it, as they would for Islam. But even Islam, despite its high view of God, does not offer the worshiper intimacy with God: "Allah reveals his message. He never reveals himself." The worshiper prays to him but cannot be said in any way to know Allah or have intimacy with him. Such a claim is deemed blasphemous. You can be killed for making it.
Finally, there are the revelatory religions. There have only been two (closely connected) religions in world history that teach that God can be personally known by the believer. Only Judaism and its "child" Christianity maintain that God has given a reliable and personal disclosure of Himself to humankind. Judaism tells of God's revelation of Himself through His mighty deeds of deliverance for Israel and through the words of the prophets. The Jewish people believed that God's only residence on earth was the space between the wings of the cherubim figures above the "mercy seat" of the ark: this was located first in the moveable tabernacle and then in the temple at Jerusalem. Of course, Judaism is very differently placed today. There is no ark, no priesthood, no sacrifices, no tabernacle, no temple. Modem Judaism tends to focus on religious law, morality and synagogue worship.
The other faith that developed this strain of divine
revelation, so strong in Judaism, is Christianity - or rather Jesus Christ. He claimed to be the fulfillment of all God's promises to Israel and to be the final revelation of God to humankind. He was Emmanuel, "God with us". "In him," claimed the apostle Paul, "the whole fullness of deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). And so the Christian can say with the apostle Paul, "I know whom I have believed", or with the apostle John, "by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us" (2 Timothy 1:12; 1 John 3:24). Intimacy with God is what the Christian faith is all about. That cannot be claimed for any of the others.
It really is ludicrous to suppose that all religions lead to God, when Buddhism does not believe that there is any God at all, when Islam makes him so far removed, when Hinduism offers extinction after many incarnations and in the meantime sanctions idolatry on a massive scale. How can all religions lead to God when they have such different beliefs about God, the afterlife and how one can attain it?
Take, for example, the two views of history represented by Christianity and Hinduism. It is all the difference between the wheel and the road. The great emblem of
Hinduism is the wheel, embodying the cycle of birth,
growth, death and rebirth. It is always moving yet always turning upon itself. The wheel offers only one way of escape from this meaningless, endless movement. That is
to take a spoke - it does not matter which one - and travel along it to the hub, where all is at rest and you can observe the ceaseless movement without being involved in it. They see this as a parable. It does not matter which religion you take: follow it to that timeless, motionless center where all is peace and where you can understand the endless movement which makes up human history - understand that it goes nowhere and means nothing. It is all an illusion.
The other great symbol is not a wheel but a road. That is the view of history taken by Christianity. It has a beginning in time, a midpoint (the coming, dying and rising of Jesus Christ) and a goal. That goal is not some timeless reality
hidden behind all the variety and change of daily life. No,
history is going somewhere. It has a purpose. And the goal for God's redeemed people is to enjoy intimate and uninterrupted communion with the Lord of history forever, in heaven.
Let me put it another way. There are two powerful reasons why all religions do not lead to God. The first is because of the nature of God. If there is a God at all, He must be the source both of humankind and our environment. The prophet asks:

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers . . . the nations are like a drop from a bucket, like dust on the
scales." (Isaiah 40:21, 22, 15)

That is the majestic God we are talking about. How can we possibly climb up to Him? It cannot be done. Far from all religions leading to God, no religion can lead to God. He is too great. The creature cannot possibly discover the Creator unless He chooses to disclose Himself. That is one reason why all religions are bound to disappoint. Do you know that little poem "If"?

If
all religions
lead to God,
how come
most of them,
having been given
a thousand years at least, haven't yet
arrived?

If by "religion" we mean humanity's search for the divine, it is bound to fail. What we need is not to compare the chinks of light that different religions may have perceived, but to experience the sunrise, which eclipses the light of every candle. We do not need a religion, but a revelation. And that is precisely what Christianity claims to be. Unlike other holy books, the Bible does not record the story of human beings in search of God, but of God in search of human beings.
There is a second reason why no religion will ever reach through to God. Not simply because of the nature of God, but because of the nature of human beings. The Bible gives a very unflattering picture of humankind, but one that is uncomfortably near the mark. It tells us, for instance, that we do not all have hearts of gold as we fondly suppose, but that the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. It tells us that the murders and adulteries, the lies and folly do not proceed from our circumstances, but from our hearts. It tells us that there is no difference between us, for all have sinned and come short of God's glorious standard. It tells us that people love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil
(Jeremiah 17:9; Mark 7:20-23; Romans 3:23; John 3:19). There is something twisted in our nature (along with much that is good). As a result, we do not want God interfering in our lives. We want to paddle our own canoe. And even if we do engage in a serious search for God, there is the ball and chain of our own misdeeds hanging around our ankles. All of us fail to qualify, whether we come from the so-called Christian West, the Communist bloc, or the mystic East.
None has arrived at God, both because He is too great for any of His creatures to pierce His incognito, and also because His creatures are too twisted, too self-centered to want to get near Him. The greatness of God and the sinfulness of human beings are the two massive reasons why all religions do not lead to God.
Many who urge that all religions do lead to God offer us. the image of a mountain, with a number of routes going up to the top. It does not matter which route you take: any of them will get you to the top. We have seen that this view is untenable. I want to offer you a different analogy. What if the real situation is like people trying to find their way through a maze? There are lots of routes that bring us to a dead end and fail to get us out of the maze. There is just one way through.
That is the astounding and, at first sight, arrogant Christian claim, and we shall be examining it in the remainder of this little book." - "Don't all Religions Lead to God?": Navigating the Multi-Faith Maze

The whole love/intimacy thing is like a cycle. You love God by carrying out His will and the more you do that, the more of an intimate relationship you have with Him, and the closer you get to Him, the more you love Him.

Er, no. I'm saying it's a biased source because it's obviously written by a Christian.

It would be biased in a different direction if it were written by a Muslim, Jew, or Atheist.

Just can't talk about religion without biased sources.

I ... never said it did. eek I totally didn't read all of TJF's post cuz it was way too long and made my brain cells hurt, so it could be I'm just confused on what the topic is. sweatdrop

I agree and disagree at the same time. I'm too tired to go into it right now, so maybe in about ten hours or so. 3nodding

God may be "at work" in everyone's life but Him being "at work" is Him bringing people to Him and to Christianty (Christian means "Christ-like", and isn't that what we should be doing? That is to get to heaven and to God). But, just because God is "at work" in someone's life doesn't meant that that person won't go to hell, cuz that person could be ignoring God's warning signs and God's calling.

If multiple paths exist then do athiests go to heaven?

Well, definitely, a person can be "in touch" with God in whatever religion they choose (assuming their religion of choice actually supports the existance of God- atheism, agnosticism, and Satanism don't count). However, just because they acknowledge God doesn't mean they are saved. Salvation comes from one Person alone, and that's Jesus Christ. If you're not "in touch" with Him, then your God is pointless and will lead you nowhere.

You can't be Christian and Buddist at the same time; in the Bible it says that u can't serve two masters, either one is ur enemy and the other ur "friend" or u hate one and love the other or u r loyal to one and an enemy to the other.