[taxcontrol]

I have been in similar situations before. I normally first ask if you are truly wanting answers or if you are just engaging in conversation. Because if you are not going to listen there is no sense in me wasting my breath and your time. This normally sets up the position that I posses knowledge that you do not have and most often, you will respond with an honest attempt to engage me. This will be an attempt by you to extract knowledge from me. It positions me as the teacher and you as the student.

If you proceed, I will use a series of questions to guide you to the conclusions.

Do you believe that there is a God?
If so, what kind of God - good or evil, wise or foolish, active or passive in the affairs of men?
If God is such a great being, what does he want from men?
How does man's free will play into the relationship between God and man?
If God is perfect, can God tolerate sin? If man has a sinful nature or can freely choose sin, then how does God bring man into fellowship?
Can mankind obtain perfection of their own effort? Aren't there things that man should do but does not and through their ignorance does not even know that they should be doing them. How can man ever obtain a perfect state and thus approach God without sin?
Isn't there a price or justice that has to be made to atone for sin. We see this in our laws. If I steal from my fellow man don't I have the obligation to make restitution?
What does God expect from man to make atonement for sin? How can man make an atonement for a sin of omission i.e. does not even know that he needs to make atonement because he does not even know he has sinned?
If God is a God of love and desires fellowship with mankind, would God leave man to flounder about on his own in spiritual darkens, or would God provide guidance, counsel and leadership to mankind?

These are all questions used to frame a conversation with a professed agnostic. Answers to these questions can be steered into an number of religions or away from religions. If I use my knowledge of my faith to answer these questions or guide you to answer these questions, then you will come to a position where you accept that:

There is a God.
God is loving and seeks to have fellowship with man
Man has free will to choose or reject God
God is perfect and can not or will not taint himself with sin.
Man's free will means that he has a sinful nature
Man can not ever obtain perfection on his own
God's perfection requires that atonement be made for sin
God has made a way for man to receive the atonement for sin
God would not leave man to his own understanding and fate
God has provided messages through scripture to tell man of the path of atonement.

[urroner]

Okay, let’s suppose there is a God and that He is perfect an all-loving, these are the honest questions I, as a logical agnostic, would ask:
Why would He create imperfection?
Why would He create beings that He knew would spend an eternity rotting and being tormented in Hell when He didn’t have to?
How does God choose who goes to Heaven and who to goes to Hell?
What is God’s purpose? Does He even have a purpose?
Why did God even create us? Does we fulfill some emotional lack that He has or provide Him some necessary external stimulation?
What is the purpose of life if it’s not necessary for it for God to decide whether we go to Heaven or to Hell? Why did He create us in this life when He already knows our final destination?
Why would God want to punish somebody forever? Does He get pleasure out of it?
If God created everything, why did He create evil?

(Remember, I am a logical agnostic and these are some of the questions I have been asking my wife and she doesn’t know the answer to them. I would like a logical answer, but if there is none, then there isn’t any, but I would like to be told that.)