so the Devil and his followers get sent to Hell, while sinners get sent to something worse? Or am I misunderstanding you?

except that God made sin. Even if sin weren't God's fault, damning us to Hell because of sin certainly is.

you just said that choice is not equal to sin. This is true. Choice is completely independent from sin. We could very easily have choice without having sin. Yet, God gave us the choice to sin anyway. God did not have to put that Tree in the garden. If he had not put it there, Adam and Eve would still have complete free will and would have never sinned.

see, God could have made it physically impossible for humans to sin simply by designing their brains a little more intelligently. We could still have free will and be incapable of sin, much like we have free will today but do not have the capability to defy gravity and levitate.

God doesn't act on his foreknowledge? This is very irresponsible, first of all. Say I had the foreknowledge that a child was going to run across the street and get hit by a car. Say I also had the power to prevent this from happening. If I have both the knowledge (omniscience) and the power (omnipotence) but I do not act, I am responsible for that child's death. I am not omnibenevolent.

of course, even this metaphor doesn't fully explain it, because God actually must act on his foreknowledge. After all, God was omniscient before he created the Universe, right? You aren't telling me that he created the Universe before he knew everything that would happen in it, are you? Therefore, God doesn't even have to act on his foreknowledge, he simply had to create the Universe from the beginning in a way that would have prevented anything evil from ever happening. Prevention is more easier and more desirable than intervention, right?

so it's more like I put the car there, I put the child there, and I made sure that they would collide.

again, this makes God irresponsible at best and completely evil at worst.

take for example a parent and a child. The parent puts rat poison in a bowl and leaves it on the floor, telling the child not to eat it, and then leaves the room. Is the child responsible if it eats the poison and dies? No, the parent is, and should be charged with negligent homicide. After all, the parent must have been completely stupid, irresponsible, or just evil to leave poison in the reach of a child.

same with God. He is completely able to put sin out of our reach, and yet he lets us have it anyway, knowing full well that he plans to burn us for it later.

[quote]It's our choice. Internal bliss or eternal damnation. If we spend an entire lifetime choosing the path of eternal damnation, then how is that God's fault? Because he allowed it to happen? It's our choice. We allowed it to happen to ourselves.

just above. You can't say that God doesn't send anyone to Hell and then say that God decides who goes to Hell without contradicting yourself. It's the same thing.

so that verse is incorrect, then?

good for you. You earn fifteen karma points towards your next reincarnation.

your point? Remember, I do believe I said "more likely" not "absolutely certain" and nowhere did I suggest that everyone turns out exactly like their parents. I do believe that there are in fact statistics that show that children who grow up in abusive homes are more likely, on average, to abuse their own children. And it doesn't require any statistics to show that children who grow up in Christian homes are more likely to be Christian.

and how about this for environmental factors: children who grow up in English speaking homes are almost absolutely certain to grow up speaking English as their primarly language. It isn't in their genetics, it's all about environment.

okay, so God made you the way you are and God knew how you would turn out, we agree?

meaning he is either not omnipotent (all powerful) or not omnibenevolent (all good).

okay, so I leave some electrically live and completely bare wires out in a room. Touching them could lead to electrocution. I put them there, I could have put them away, I know what problems they could cause, and I do nothing about them. I let a child, or hell, an adult even go into that room, warning him not to touch the wires, but his curiosity gets the best of him or he slips and falls or whatever.

if he dies it's his own damn fault?

sin is exactly like this. We could be perfectly incapable of sinning and still have complete free will. If you say that God cannot do this, you are saying that God is not omnipotent. God could have easily not put that Tree in the Garden. God could have easily made Adam and Eve smarter or less curious so that they would never eat from the Tree. God could have easily not let the serpent in the Garden.

but he let us all damn ourselves to Hell anyway.

what a wonderful God we have.