Now, just because he knows where we ultimately will end up, does that necessarily mean we didn't have a say in it? I don't think so. I get up in the morning, and I choose whatever I want to do. I conciously choose to sin when I do sin, even though I know its wrong. I believe we have free will and we determine where we end up, even if the Creator happens to know the choices we will make. It doesn't necessarily mean those choices were predetermined.
You may choose what you do, but as you say, God knows what that's going to be. If God knows every choice you will make and where you will end up, and he KNOWS that you will go to Hell, in my opinion it's pretty cruel and senseless of him to put you here on Earth regardless. I mean, look at me. If God knows all and sees all, then he knew before he even made me that I would not believe in him. But he put me here anyway, knowing that would happen and that I would go to hell. Should I be thankful for that?
Regarding why we have to suffer for the sins of Adam and Eve: if you look at it, that sort of thing is still happening today. An innocent fetus is turned into a drug addict because his mother is a crack head. People die of cancer due to pollution and other things people did in the past. We all suffer from the choices of our ancestors no matter if we like it or not. Thats why sin isn't necessarily just a personal decision.
Those things happen all the time, yes, but I don't see the connection between pollution being bad for future generations and God making a concious decision to punish his own children for sins they did not commit.
Also, its silly to say that you had to be enstilled with faith as a child in order to believe in God. Thats simply not true. Both my parents didn't believe in God, and my dad went on to pastor a church. Something about our intelect doesn't want us to believe that a God exists. Its like we conceive it as a naive thought or something. Because we can't see it physically, we choose to think it doesn't exist. In reallity theres no better explaination for why we're here outside of a creator.
Okay, you're right. Some people do turn to God as adults. I'll give you that. As for the rest, I'll also admit that there isn't any better explanation than a creator, except that as you say our intellect resists the idea. But a creator is as good an explanation as any. However I disagree with belief based on lack of knowledge, i.e. if you can't prove it's not true then it is true. Following that logic I would have to believe in God, Russel's Teapot, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Ra, and dragons from Mars, along with a lot of other things.
I'm sorry, but thats an age old stupid question. By what logic do you think God had to be created by something or someone else? I have no reason to believe that anybody created God. He just was. Also, you'l probably say, "so he was just here forever?" God doesn't operate by days, months and years like us. There is no time for him. So what is forever to you means nothing to him. Time is something humans made up for reference.
So you admit that God, a much more complex being than we are, didn't have to be "created"...but we lesser beings had to be? If something as impossible as God could have just been there, how come we had to be made by something else? As for what you say about time...I wouldn't say we "made it up". I would say it just was.
You go outside and practice screaming. We'll play music while you're gone.
