From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[RDK]

If God knows the future then every action taken by men is also foreknown. What is prophecy anyway but God's affirmation to us that everything which could be known to happen will happen.

The future does not have to be predetermined for the biblical god to predict that certain things will happen. Since he is a powerful deity able to make people act as he wishes, he can direct circumstances as he pleases. So when the biblical god says "this will happen" the certainty of it is not that he looked ahead and read the next chapter. The certainty is from knowing that he can manipulate events to make sure that it will happen.

There, a simple explanation that allows for god to predict future events without being trapped by fate. Sure, it makes him manipulative and a bit creepy and brings up the question of why someone willing to meddle in people's affairs and take away their freedom on a whim would have required an elaborate plan to deal with the original sin. But those questions are easier to deal with that anything to do with the idea that the future is so static that it can be "read."

If there truly is a God running things, it certainly cannot be from a distance. Could God know what will happen five minutes from now? How about one hour, one year, thousands of years? We're talking about God's plan here, not His accident. If someone feels that his freedom has been lost, let me put it another way. If you are a part a a very grand scheme, that makes you a very important piece. There is no one out there exactly like you...you are unique. A robot you say, No way. If God has chosen to experience Himself through your life, why would you be dissapointed by that. If God did not plan every aspect of the activities of peoples lives ahead of time, He could not know the future. Some freewill thinker could come along and upset the plan.
Taken another way...God has stood up the dominoes in directions that we have no way of knowing. Those dominoes are us. The purpose of all this is us. God does not diminish your importance because your life has a plan which God has orchestrated. He shows us that the future has very specific results which He wants us to see. Nothing happens by chance. Everything is planned and in control. God is the maker and designer od everything. This should give you some comfort. You probably already know that free-will is not a Biblical concept. People feel that since they apparently make all of their own decisions, free will must be a fact.
Haven't you ever experienced a premonition or a feeling that something was going to happen to you in your future and it actually happens that way?
I get the idea that you feel that God just threw out a bunch of people out onto the earth to suffer and pain for no good reason? That would be cruel. Who could follow a God like that? If God is the designer, He also created the way that you would think, the personality which you alone have, the future thoughts that you will think.
Biblically speaking, Paul was troubled by this too. What if God made two pots; one to be filled with righteous things, and the other with things that would result in it needing to be destroyed?
It's not pots He is talking about here, but people. There are people here who do good things, and others whose things should be destroyed because they have no good value. God does not need to kill His own children. It's the bad stuff that He is needing to remove.