Though the term “secular humanism” has only been in use about thirty years, the movement traces its philosophical lineage back to classical Greek philosophers like Epictetus and Epicurus as well as to Chinese Confucianism. As the name makes clear, it is a nonreligious movement, though it is not by definition an atheistic one. Rather it asserts that morality, which it says should play a central role in life, exists independently of god and religion, and that religious belief is not a prerequisite for behaving ethically. Another core tenet says the only reliable knowledge of the world comes from scientific inquiry and reason, not faith or scripture, and denies supernatural explanations for the basic mysteries of existence, such as how the universe originated. Instead, it seeks natural, materialist answers, meaning explanations observable in the physical world.

Kabbalah is a body of Jewish mystical thought based on the belief that the Hebrew Scriptures contain the keys to understanding the mysteries of god and the universe, concealed in the form of alphanumeric codes and esoteric symbols. The exact origins of the kabbalist tradition are uncertain. One popular version has it that God imparted the knowledge, along with the 10 Commandments, directly to Moses on Mt. Sinai, after which it was passed down orally (hence the term "kabbalah," which is Hebrew for "reception"). But its origins are likely more recent, perhaps dating to the middle ages.

In Catholicism, can you go to heaven without being baptized?

For most of the last 800 years, the answer was no. From about the beginning of the 13th century to the middle of the 20th, Catholic doctrine held that, without being absolved of original sin through baptism, unbaptized children and unbaptized adults who lived virtuously went to limbo after death. But limbo, which was never officially defined as Catholic dogma, has long been troubling to Catholics who could not understand why God would deny admittance to Heaven to children who had not sinned themselves. In the 1960s, limbo began to go out of favor, and it was eventually omitted from the catechism. In April of this year, a Vatican-appointed panel of theologians declared limbo a "problematic" concept, inconsistent with a God that "wants all human beings to be saved," and announced that Catholics were free to disregard the doctrine.