[Serious] Time to embrace Islam!

[EgoDeath]

The only qualities I can know are those that god allowed me to know. And for that there is no way around scripture.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that you've come to know the qualities of god through reading scripture? I'll continue to read on for the clarity you claim you're going to provide...

To avoid any circularity let me clarify the whole thing like this:

(1) If one assumes a God exists with some desirable properties,...

Okay, stop. Why would I assume that?

...which include justness, then necessarily God gave us the way to know him to some extent and what he expects us to do in this life, the only thing one can think of that matches that is scripture. Next step is then to investigate good 'candidate' scriptures.

Okay, so you're already operating on the false assumption that god exists, and have made yet another false assumption by stating that if we assume god exists, and has "desirable properties," then god would reveal to us the way to know him through scripture. But why would you assume that? Why would scripture be the only way to know god?

If God didn't give us any clear way at all in this life, then he necessarily possesses negative properties (namely: absolutely uncaring and unjust). And inquiry about his existence is meaningless since nothing changes by us knowing whether he exists or not.

...Still operating on false assumptions. But okay; I'd agree that god would be better to give us a way to know of its existence than to not. If a god exists, surely it should provide some evidence of its existence to humans so we would know that it is there.

(2) If one doesn't assume God exists, then he should investigate how truthful are the people who claim to communicate with him. The truth of one claim is then proof of both God's existence (which the religious claims usually entail) and the truth of the particular religion.

Okay, so you're already operating from a place of presumption... But who says I should believe you if you claim to communicate with god? If I say to you that I communicate with little green men from Mars, are you required to take my word for it, simply because I'm a truthful person, so far as you know? That seems like an odd way to treat "evidence" for god.

As I clarified above it depends on one's position about God's existence. If one is absolutely agnostic about the question the most natural way is to read about the prophets' claims and what evidence did they present without the need of checking standard proofs like the Kalam argument, the teleological, ontological, etc.

These proofs are constantly refined to address the constant holes found, but if God exists it shouldn't be that difficult to find out about it, leaving the prophets as the only plausible proof.

As I've explained to many other users before, a lot of us have dealt with these same arguments over and over for years and end and simply don't feel like dismantling them anymore. I've personally argued about intelligent design more times than I cant count. You know how that conversation ended, almost every time? With some random theist quoting scripture at me and telling me I'm going to hell.

The dirty little truth about theologians and supposedly sophisticated religious thinkers is that a large number of them simply hope to drown these concepts in ambiguity in order to make religious concepts more palatable to a more scientifically literate generation. It's bullshit man. It just is.

That they identify as Buddhists is an opinion of theirs. If one is a true Buddhist he should adhere at least to the core ideas, which obviously don't include the christian God. If one claims he's a Muslm but doesn't acknowledge Muhammad's prophecy then there is something wrong with his claim, he is either lying or is terribly misinformed about the system of belief he's adhering to.

No true Scotsman.

The answer I give of course doesn't answer all the cases one can think of about evil, there is like a whole literature on theodicy. But it does address the fundamental problem with christianity : God will punish some poeple with eternity in hell while he loves them. In this form the problem is simply unanswerable, some assumption is not correct or the deity doesn't exist.
Omnibenevolence is actually nonsensical, love and caring entail elements of human affection which can't be extended to a creator.

The famous objection of bone cancer in children is a good example of that, we cannot stand as humans a newborn suffering an incurable disease, from our perspective it's extremely unsettling, but again any level of suffering for any finite length of time is (if a just deity exists) entirely canceled out by an eternity of heavenly existence.

It sounds like one of those deals that's too good to be true.

Look man, I have a car to sell you... and it doesn't run great right now... but when it finally dies, I'm gonna' buy you a Ferrari, and then you'll be totally set. Trust me.