God is in charge of the world.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Wrong again.  As an omnipotent, omniscient Being, God created everything, including our decisions and choices.  In the context of such a Being, there can logically be no free will.  If you buy into the rubbish that God created the universe, then God knew, from the beginning of time, that I would be an atheist - I had no choice in the matter, just as you had no choice in believing the most outlandish collection of fairy stories ever inflicted on the western world.  If God made everything, then God made me an atheist, made you a believer, made rapists, torturers, and murderers.  God is directly responsible for evil, full stop.

Boru

I can't agree with you on that.  God made us with the capacity to make our own choices.  We alone decide what choices they are going to be.  In no way does God make the choices.  You chose to be an atheist totally on your own.  God didn't coerce you into your choice and doesn't own your decision.

*indulgent chuckle* You don't have to agree with me on anything. But the stance that 'God created everything, but human beings still have free will' creates an implosion of logic. If God created the universe, then God created all things and the spaces between those things (this bit is definitional and not subject to debate). The notion that choices and decisions don't qualify as 'things' is simply loony (if they aren't 'things', then what are they?). Thus, if God did NOT create choices and decisions, then God did not create the universe.

Or, look at it another way. God knows, and always had known - from the instantiation of the universe - that a particular man, call him 'Joe', if going to rape and murder a 6 years old child on a particular day at a particular time(if God does not know this, then God cannot be omnipotent). The universe is 13.8 billion years old, give or take a smidge. For all that time, up to the present day, God knows this bit of horror is going to take place. He knows what his creation (Joe) is going to decide to do. God knows that inescapably and inexorably. Yet God permits the creation of the rapist and murderer of a child, a situation he could have easily prevented.

How does God NOT bear responsibility for this?

Boru