Quote from: Martin on August 09, 2011, 00:32:01

TBH, from my experience Andy, I think that, if there are pople who seek eternal  reward they will be more likely to be Christians than Atheists ...

so you disregard Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Animists, Pagans, etc.     or do they fit in the 'Atheist' category for you 

Uh! What is it about 'more likely to be Christians than Atheists' that you don't understand Andy?  Yes they may well be also more likely to be people of other faiths, but they are still more likely to be Chrsitians than Atheiests.  Since we're on a site which identifies itself as Christian, I used the example of Christians. 

I think the difference for me between Christians and the other religious groups I've mentioned above is that only one of these faiths doesn't require someone to act in such a way (the giving of alms, the earning of karma, etc) in order to achieve 'salvation'.

There's very little difference, Andy,  it's a splitting of hairs really.  Firstly, there are parts of the Bible that are pretty clear that works are required to make faith work - faith without works is dead,  secondly there are parts of the Bible that indicate that the criterion by which people will be saved or not is works - the sheep and the goats.  I know that Evangelicals like to big up these supposed differences between Christianity and other religions, but in reality they often preach very similar things.