Fair enough. I guess my question then is what is the difference between heaven and our current situation on earth? Merely that we have:

1. eternal life
2. only the "chosen" get to be in heaven

will we still have any human traits like hungry, thrist, desire, etc? or what?

random question. Is choosing not to want to go to heaven because one does not want to spend eternity with the likes of Pletho, Splendour, and Gunth a good reason in God's eyes? Will he give you your wish of eternal death, or will he send you to hell still?

If God gave you an immortal soul upon your creaton then even God cannot take that away from you(otherwise your soul would not have been immortal....God cannot create a contradiction like an immortal soul which isn't immortal...such a thing is silly).

Just because eternal death is not on the menu doesn't mean you are not without choice.

Tell me how i can chose to believe in God and his rules?

interesting...im not sure many other theists (maybe bunny?) would say something similar...

what kind of god do you think is the most likely to exist? why dont you worship that one?

Why do you choose not to?

No worries - he would have given you the ability to choose, you would choose to be nice and he could also ensure you wouldnt want to slit your throat. Where's the loser in that?

(BTW - care bear vs real world is clearly a false dichotomy. "The world could be a little bit better than it is" is all that is required for us to have a problem).

If I can answer too.

I don't have a motive to start believing. I would have a motive if I thought belief will make me a better or more happy person, but I don't think so.

As you probably know from your experiences, you need to have a motive to do something. Are you saying you started believing for no reason? All of you religious people constantly talk about how you made a free choice to start believing, but rarely mention any reasons why you made such choice. If you analyzed your decision-making process you would realize why you do the things that you do - it's not about free choice, it's about doing what you want, what you desire, what your reason tells you is the best. And different people have different desires, needs and reasons - please stop reducing complex human mind to "free choice" and realize what are the real causes of human actions.

Setting up the world so that people could only choose to be "nice" makes no sense because "niceness" makes no sense without the existence of its opposite.

What does charity mean in a world without selfishness? If God removes some of our capacity to be selfish He also removes some of our capacity to be charitable.

It's a question of degree. In such a world the opposite of "nice" is "really, really nice". We can freely choose between those meaningfully.
I'm aware of this defense to the problem of evil. If you follow it to it's logical conclusion, I can't see any way out of claiming this as the best of all possible worlds (which may be true, but I find implausible). As I said:

I was just watching a video with Alvin Plantiga where he takes the position that it might be that a "best of all possible worlds" may not exist, in the same way that it is not possible for their to be a greatest natural number.

This is ultimately the position I am forced to. It's not implausible (I don't think 'omnibenevolent' means anything for similar reasons) but nonetheless seems like a dodge to me.

Our claim needs to be that the world couldnt be bettet. That God couldnt make the world just a little bit better than this, while still giving us all the presumed benefits of allowing evil. It may be true (and as I said - I think it's logically required as a theist), but it doesn't seem plausible to me, since I can think of all kinds of ways of making the world a little bit better.

"The world could be a little bit better than it is" is all that is required for us to have a problem.

I understand what you are saying, and I think that I would really need to hear him talk more about this before accepting it as a reasonable position. It does seem to have that "cop out" feel to it, but that could just be because I don't understand it fully.

I don't know that I agree. If it is true that no "best of all worlds" exists, then there would be no "best" choice that an omnibenevolent God would be forced to choose.

If there is no world in which God must choose necessarily due to his nature, then he is free to choose a world based on another criteria. It may be that this world is not the best of all possible worlds with regards to immediate suffering, but maybe this world is the world in which the most people choose to follow him ultimately.

If anything, I think it is a very interesting question.

Can you give me one example of how the world could have been made a little bit better?

Pointless when you can dismiss every example using conjecture.

Which is exactly the problem I see with Bunny's position. He's not making an argument, he is expressing a feeling....an opinion. Which is fine as long as he reckognizes it as such(which I think he does).

Not all opinions are equal. Do you think that "this world could be better" and "this world couldn't be better" are a 50/50 proposition?

i hope this is true, because im 99% sure god would like me. i do have a pool table.

Consider an animal which is caught in a trap and lies suffering on its own for several hours before dying in agony. I maintain the world would be a little bit better if that suffering lasted for half a second less.

You're right that I acknowledge it's "just a feeling" - I refer to it as implausible rather than impossible. As I said, I think a theist is forced to claim this to be the best world possible (or one of the best) if we wish to remain consistent. A theist must believe (it seems to me) that the world would have been worse if the animal hadnt suffered for that entire time, but I find it implausible.

Hence theism is wrong, my intuition is wrong or there is some resolution I havent thought of yet.

Even if there's no 'best' there can still be a better. Why didnt God make it better?
Clearly 'best' should be understood in a global sense - this is the 'god works in mysterious ways/you can't know the mind of God/etcetera' defence. Again possible but hard to believe (imo anyhow).
I think it's very troubling. I don't find any of the traditional philosophical objections to God to be troubling, but I find the problem of evil intractable.

Maybe He left it up to us.

Of course you can say maybe - maybe is always an answer. What do you think though? Do you think it's likely? Plausible even? What are we supposed to do about the suffering of creatures we are ignorant of? (a la my example above). When natural disasters kill thousands the world could be better if the level of pain experienced by one dying child was just a fraction less - how are we supposed to do anything about that?

I find it implausible that he couldnt have made the world just a tiny bit better without depriving us of whatever benefits the existence of evil brings. If you personally think it's likely to be true that nothing could be better than this, then you don't have a problem with the problem of evil. I don't see a way out other than claiming he did the best he could and that therefore this is as good as it gets (in a global sense, and conceding that allowing free choice somehow improves goodness even though we now do some bad things).

But then if he made the world "better", wouldn't you still then ask "why did he not make it better?" This would go on until you hit "best". But if there is no "best" that you can hit, at what point do you get to a world in which it is justifiable for a omnibenevolent God to choose?

[/QUOTE]Clearly 'best' should be understood in a global sense - this is the 'god works in mysterious ways/you can't know the mind of God/etcetera' defence. Again possible but hard to believe (imo anyhow).[/QUOTE]

I don't think this is in anyway a 'god works in mysterious ways' argument.

I would say that the problem of evil is probably, imo, the most rational reason to reject God. But I don't think that that does not mean is does not have a rational answer. Nor do I think that giving a rational answer in anyway down plays the terrible things that happen in this world.

I have no idea, but I don't need to - we only have this world and it seems like it could be better. Choosing the improved version seems consistent with a benevolent God. If this one can be improved then God is either not benevolent or was constrained in power in some way.

"Well he had to choose SOMETHING" isnt a defence if the one he chose can be improved. The 'there's no best' defense is usually that there are a whole bunch of equally good worlds - this being one of them. Unless you believe that the concept of improving the world is inherently nonsensical (which I reject on the grounds that I can perform a moral act - determined by whether or not I think the world will be better or not by doing it).
The argument that this IS the best of all possible worlds from God's ultimate perspective even if it seems to us like it can be improved is a 'mysterious ways' argument. The claim being that from God's perspective it is the best - we can't know why, but we have to trust him. (FWIW, my current resting place, intellectually depressing as it is).
I agree with each of these sentences except for the first (which I don't understand).

If we are talking about the Christian God he could do any number of the things he is said to have done in the past to take away suffering. Maybe manna from heaven for all the starving people or something.