“But, if we assume your God’s existence, doesn’t that mean your God created us with these brains and with the ability to learn stuff and think rationally? Doesn’t that suggest your God might WANT us to learn stuff and think rationally, and fulfill our potential?”

“No. Because our brains were messed up in The Fall. Adam and Eve were childlike and humble and trusting. They had everything provided for them and didn’t have to think or any desire to do so. With The Fall, sin entered into us and we took up learning and reasoning because we were arrogant enough to think we could be like God and could figure it all out ourselves and live without God’s help.”

“Wait a minute. Do you think Adam and Eve were created without any sin or flaw? After all, could a perfect God create less than perfect creatures? If Adam and Eve were originally without sin, how could they have committed the ORIGINAL sin—eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? That had to require a level of independent thought and rationalization they shouldn’t have been capable of. The Serpent shouldn’t have been able to convince them to eat from the tree…his arguments should have been meaningless to them. So actually, God had to have created humans with the capacity for sin—free will, independent thought. It didn’t come from The Fall—we were, essentially, created already fallen. We had the ability, the outcome was inevitable. For that matter, God had to have created ANGELS with the capacity for sin, since Lucifer sinned and fell. Why exactly did God do this? Why did a perfect God create a universe with a built-in flaw? Your explanation is ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ Mine is, ‘Your God is really f’d up.’”