Knowing everything and allowing evil

[genkaus]

You are misquoting me in every direction.

How can I misquote you when I never quoted you?

I did not say man cannot be good. In fact the bible calls many of the prophets very good people. I never said man cannot be good.

Fact: Christian's believe that god is the standard for good.
Fact: Christian's also believe that no man can be good (sinless) by god's standards.

Conclusion: No man can be good.

And how exactly does the Christian beliefs create unhappiness? In order to believe that you must exclude the millions of Christians who are happy.

Pay attention. I said happiness OR rationality. Most people simply choose the former over the latter. A rational Christian cannot be happy and a happy Christian is not rational.

The bible actually teaches us how to be most happy. By following his commandments.

Following the commandments. Translation: stop thinking for yourself and do as I say. Which requires giving up your rational faculty.

He wants us to live for him.

A rational person would rather live for himself.

To get married and have children and love them. Not to worry about money. To put God first, then others, then yourself. To be honest with one another and not hurt one another.

And he wants all this irrespective of a person's own wishes. These things would make a rational person happy only if he chose those actions rationally and for his own purpose. To chose these based on god's wishes and be happy would require him to give up his rationality.

Does lying, stealing, hurting and such create happiness? No and this is why God says don't do it.

It does seem to do so for liars, thieves and sadists.

And you take this deserving thing completely the wrong way. We do not deserve God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness. But what do we do about it? We do our best to give back to God; not destroy ourselves. We use it in a constructive manner so we can make God proud and give him as much as we can give. This is how you interpret it. You can't include the bad without the good.

I find the word "grace" meaningless.
Deserving mercy is a contradiction in terms. If you deserve it, it isn't mercy, it is justice.
And the concept of deserving forgiveness would apply only if there was a sin in the first place. Which brings us back to your definition of human nature as inherently sinful.
Why would we need to give anything back to god when we haven't taken anything?
Why would not destroying ourselves be considered "giving back"?
What about the fact that accepting things on faith is the simplest way of destroying oneself?
Why does the constructive way of making god proud is so self-destructive?

And finally, do you say that by our good actions we become deserving of things we were previously undeserving of? That a good person deserves a place in heaven irrespective of whether he believed in god?