Christianity

These points are more difficult for me to give any definitive response to, as to a certain extent it would require me to know the mind of God - which I can't profess to be even close to! The best I can do is to say that the following points are just my current thoughts and logic based on my studies into these matters in my life so far: 1) If God is all knowing, then how come he/she/it didn't stop Adam and Eve? For me, this is the very essence of free will. The basic logic is that God COULD have made everything perfect from the outset, with no capacity for sin or to defy God. However, that would be at the great cost of not ever having allowing us any free will, and would effectively mean humanity would just have to be subservient "robots" - having to do what we are told. The only way to offer truly free will to creation was to give us the choice to do right or wrong - to obey God's laws, or to go our own way. This is another vast topic, but my perspective in a nutshell is that free will is the key factor in why God allows evil to occur in this temporary world, and to a lesser extent it also explains why God keeps himself relatively "hidden" from us. If he/she/it was blindingly obvious, like on a big TV screen in the sky for all to see, then again it calls into question whether we would actually have genuine free will in that type of situation. The best analogy I can draw here is that it is one thing for a child to demonstrate that they can behave themselves whilst their parents are in the same room blatantly watching over them, but quite a different matter if the parents are in a different part of the house and seemingly not around. 2) Why doesn't God stop Satan? This all depends on your perspective. As a Christian, I believe God has ultimately stopped Satan in the long run with the Cross, but until the end of this existence humanity still has free will and the capacity for evil - so bad stuff still happens. The answer to this also depends on your frame of reference for Satan: a) Satan is a real being, with spiritual power and a force for evil b) Satan is the personification of human sin, and our capacity to do evil with our free will I'm afraid I haven't come to any definitive conclusion between a) and b). Christ seems to refer to Satan as an actual being at times, but Christ also speaks in metaphors a great deal of the time - so it really could be either. 3) Why doesn't God restart again/why isn't it better now after the first restart of Noah? For me, this is all about timing. I believe it is God's ultimate intention for a genuinely perfect restart in the form of our eventual existence in heaven for those who choose to be there with him. Similar to point 1, you could ask why didn't he just make everything perfect from the Noah "restart" onwards - but again that would screw up free will. The fact that we have free will, and have come through this temporary imperfect existence first, offers two unique benefits in the long run: a) Humanity has had a genuine free choice to choose heaven for themselves, and not had this forced upon them. b) Having experienced imperfection in this temporary existence, I believe we will far better appreciate the eventual perfection in the next existence. It is a logically tricky point to think about, but would something be truly perfect if you had no frame of reference by which to appreciate that it was perfect? A common objection to an all-perfect, all-loving God is that he/she/it can't possibly exist given all the truly evil things that happen in the world. BUT, that overlooks a very critical issue: the possibility that there might be a "greater good" that comes out of having created beings with free will, and that they get to choose the perfect existence in heaven for themselves - and also that they choose to be with God. eg - the love I have for my wife is out of genuine free will, and I choose to be with her. If I had no choice over the matter, like say I was a robot just programmed to love my wife, I don't think you could even call that "love". Love and relationships can only exist where there is genuine free will. There is also an argument that "goodness" can only exist where there is the capacity for "badness". Otherwise, there is no frame of reference of what is "good" or "bad". I hope that makes some vague sense; I'm not convinced I've explained this last bit at all well!