Talksick
Bluelighter
Sorry for re-posting this, but I wanted to give it a better title.
Seeing as I am new here and haven't had a chance to fully search the site, I hope that this thread doesn't get tossed into an existing one.
First I will start with a brief background.
I was raised in a Christian home, yet there was no attempt to indoctrinate me with Christian rhetoric. However, it is safe to say that this paved the way for my life long quest for truth.
Although I have many different opinions on life and why we exist my mind is open to new ideas, and I don't think anyone should hold any beliefs too strongly. My current understanding, which is a melting pot of cultural beliefs, is based upon patterns witnessed throughout history, a metaphorical view of religious lore(rather than literalistic), and the subtle macro/microcosmic synchronicity of nature.
I, like many people, have asked questions such as:
If God is omniscient and omnipotent then why allow us to fall to temptation?
If God created everything then didn‘t God also create evil?
Who is God? Why does God exist?
So without further adieu I would like share the answers I have come up with to some of these questions. Btw, I will be using the dreaded term GOD a lot. This is strictly for lack of a better word. The atheists are going to love this. 
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God is. We can speculate on what God is, or what characteristics God may endue, but it only further adds to misunderstanding. It is my belief that all religious texts are more allegory than historical documentation, and I will lend a few examples from them to supplement my ideas.
I am sure that most of you are familiar with early Christian and Jewish creation myth, so I will try to not lose you in building too much background information. This is my summary of early belief which I will follow-up with an explanation of what I believe it means.
Before creating humans and Earth God created the heavens and the angels. The angels’ sole purpose was to praise and worship God in all of his greatness. Then God created Earth and human beings in his image. He understood the great potential and magnificence of his creation and loved the humans very much. It is said that he walked by their side and spoke with them directly, and that he grew to love them. God also gave humans the gift of freewill by creating temptation and telling them to stay away from it. The angel Lucifer saw how much God loved the humans, and he saw that God had given them freewill and this angered him. The angels never had any choice but to praise and worship God. They were servants to God, but not his friends. Lucifer decided that he would trick the humans into betraying God so as to spite him. According to myth Lucifer was successful in this endeavor, and this broke the bond between humans and God, and opened the door for infinite atrocities.
What it all means: Put yourself in the shoes of one of the angels. How would you feel if you found out that everything you had ever done was not a choice but a predetermined outcome? How would you feel if you found out you had no freewill? You would most likely be pissed off, want to rebel, and probably try to drive a wedge between your creator and those who had freewill. Alas, if you had no freewill and could not act on your own accord then would you really be rebelling?
Which leads to the other argument: If God created everything then didn‘t God also create evil? I believe that the answer to this question is yes. Now, you may be saying: ‘If God created evil and allows it to occur then wouldn’t that make God malevolent?’
My answer is no, and it can be explained in parable. In my opinion, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” in Luke 15:11-32 holds the key to finding an answer to this question. One son runs wild wasting his share of his father’s fortune on prostitutes and such. While the other son stays home and is a faithful servant to his father. When his son has finally squandered away all of his fortune and is left envying the swine that he shares a stall with, he decides to plead for forgiveness. The son expects to have to be a servant of his father’s for the rest of his life, but instead his father welcomes him home with joy and celebration. The story ends with the father saying his son was once lost but now is found.
When I look at this story I see the father as God, and the sons represent our freewill as humans. The father could have told his son no when he asked for his share of the fortune, but instead obliged and allowed him freewill. He loved his son so much that he gave him what he knew could potentially harm him because he wanted him to have freewill. In the end the son learns a valuable lesson which he never could have know without experiencing it first hand. The son has a new found respect for his father, and the father is just happy to have his lost child back.
That said, being the omniscient and omnipotent creator that God is, I would say that God is Omnibenevolent because he would have to have the foresight to understand that good cannot exist without evil, and therefore for benevolence to occur malevolence must occur first.
You cannot deem something good or pleasurable without first experiencing hardship or pain. God understood the mistakes he made in his first creation(the angels), in that he didn’t give them freewill. They loved him unconditionally because they knew of nothing but his greatness. They had nothing to contrast the glory of God against because there was no evil. God realized his arrogance in creating things for self glorification, and in turn knew he must allow his children freewill. This included the angels. They were allowed to roam the Earth and temp his newest creation, giving them freewill as well.
This is just an attempt to explain the unexplainable, and I DO NOT believe any of these stories as fact, rather the moral they portray as true. I am interested to hear what people have to say about this, especially the atheists. I myself don’t hold any religious title, but I do know for a fact that: God is.
I will start another topic on a later date about who/what I think God is, and why I think God exists.