re: #394 calochortus

As an atheist, if I’m wrong and there is an afterlife I’m betting on living a decent, if not exceptional, life to keep me from hell.
Why would an omnipotent being want to take advantage of our limited knowledge and understanding, and punish us for being as we were created?

Omar Kayyam did a goog bit of questioning in his quatrains. For example:

LXXXII
When, bending low, God moulded me from clay,
Incontrovertibly my life was ordered:
Without His order I abstain from crime.
Why should I burn, then, on His Judgement Day?

LXXXIII
That sin is irresistible, He knows;
Yet He commands us to abstain from sin.
Thus irresistibility confounds us
With prohibition:—‘Lean, but never fall!’

LXXXIV
The clay from which this human frame was moulded
Forewarned a hundred wonders for me; yet —
Could I be worse or better than I am
Who was, even before He fashioned me?

LXXXV
On every path I take, Your snares are spread
To entrap me, should I walk without due care.
Utter extremes acknowledge Your vast sway.
You order all things — yet You call me rebel?

LXXXVIII
Ordaining every cause for life or death,
Guarding this tattered robe we call the Sky,
Say, am I sinful? Are you not my Master?
Who sins when You alone created me?

http://theland.antgear.com/Rubaiyat/Robert_Graves_Omar_Ali-Shah.html