My comments aren't directly relevant to Mormonism, so replying here:
TV's Frink said:
Yes, but the ceremony they get in the afterlife is unnecessary for anyone but the living. The dead can have a ceremony given to them by the dead, or by Jesus, or whomever.
In fact, you could argue that a baptism is entirely unnecessary for the living as well. If God can indeed look into my heart and know my innermost thoughts, would he not know that I had accepted Christ as my savior? Why is there this need to declare it in public?
Of course, being non-religious myself, I think the way I live my life and treat others is much more important. If there is a God, and this God is truly above mortal emotions like pride and jealousy, he/she would not even care if I didn't believe in him/her. He/she would only care about how I lived my life.
Which leads to my central issue with most religions: that I am somehow a bad person (or at least severely misguided) because I don't believe as they do.
My point (which got lost in my rambling, perhaps) is that in my view, baptizing the dead is done for the benefit of the living, not the dead.
I suppose there's an argument that God requests such rituals as a means of solidifying people's commitment to their faith. Humans are built in such a way that rituals can help.
There are professions that require a formal swearing-in ceremony, like the legal profession. It doesn't matter that the candidates have already been declared competent, if they are not sworn in, they cannot be lawyers. It is quite possible that God recognizes the psychological benefit of ritual.
I attended my first funeral of a family member a few months ago. I found the (Catholic) wake thoroughly unsatisfying as far as rituals go. The only analogy I could come up is that it was like waiting at the DMV with a dead relative behind the counter.
I was offended when the priest went up and asked God to forgive my grandmother and save her soul. I wanted to slap the nitwit because if anyone was going to be saved it's she and it seemed awfully late to be asking. I reasoned with myself that we are all "sinners" needing forgiveness, but I still wanted to slap him.
Ultimately it all felt too much about the living when they're the one's sitting in chairs while my poor grandmother had no such luxury. Maybe I'm just not good at mourning.
Your agnostic views are very much like those of my significant other. She also especially takes issue with the idea that she is a bad person for not believing as others do. If a Christian is sincere, it is understandable that they would be upset when others' do not also seek salvation. If it's only about judging you for not yielding to peer pressure, their opinion is worthless.
One could argue that just because God wouldn't feel petty emotions of jealousy or pride doesn't mean he wouldn't care when people shut their eyes to the truth. And that does seem to be a primary argument in Christianity - that if you've been exposed to the teachings of Christ and do not accept, you therefore reject God. Christians feel that they're pointing right to the path of salvation and a non-believer is like 'thanks...but I'm gonna go this way.'
There is an issue with defining what makes someone a good person or is living a good life. To say that one is living good enough for God assumes that one knows what God deems good - not only society and culture.
Ultimately, I agree it's difficult to fathom God excluding truly decent and moral people from heaven. But if that simple axiom were the Word of God, I don't think it would mean very much for the reasons given. Living well in order to achieve salvation could mean whatever people felt was good. There would be no backstop or mechanism for God to require anything more concrete. And again, I think this goes to the value of ritual.
In Judaism, one needn't believe in God. It is very much about living a good life. But even then, there are many rituals backed by an ethnic and cultural identity that helps to define what constitutes living well.
Humans have so many psychological, emotional, and cultural hurdles, that religion can serve to offer a concrete means of overcoming those hurdles. Many people turn to God only when things get very difficult.
I have wondered whether someone with no major hardships in their life who lives well is just as worthy to enter heaven as someone with many hardships who sins constantly but honestly seek forgiveness from God.
There are people who live very bad lives. People who commit terrible crimes. And maybe it's due to psychological issues and traumatic experiences. Maybe God would see the goodness in their soul and save them, whether or not they even seek his forgiveness. Maybe a person who lives a good life just got a lot of lucky breaks but would have been rotten to the core if things had been a little different. So there is some difficulty of going down the path of simply living well. For some people, that position might simply be a way of dodging the pesky question of whether there is in fact a deity.
But again, I ultimately agree that if a person is truly moral and lives as God desires, they should be saved even if they do not dot i's and cross t's - assuming there is a deity of course.