Q: Why would a loving God even allow evil to happen in the first place?
A: Because he wants us to have free will and not be robots.

For me, that begged the question:

Q: Couldn’t an omnipotent and loving God just create humans with free will who just always happen to chose right?
A: Then the humans wouldn’t have “real” free will.

I disagree, but for the sake of argument.

Q: Does the omnipotent and loving God have free will himself?
A: Yes

Q: Couldn’t an omnipotent God just create many human versions of himself (like Jesus) who would have free will, not be robots, and always do the right thing?
A: Yes

Q: Couldn’t an omnipotent God have deleted Satan as soon as he rebelled so we could avoid all this mess?
A: Yes

So, if God could have made us perfect beings with free will, just like him without all that pain and suffering, why do it? If God is truly omnipotent, he doesn’t need for us to suffer, he can by definition find and equal or better way to reach his objective without the suffering. There are no such things as contradictions or paradoxes when you’re truly omnipotent.

If there was such thing as an omnipotent, loving God, and he was going to require you have faith in him, wouldn’t he AT THE MINIMUM make his most fundamental nature reasonable? Shouldn’t you at least be able to rationalize why he would allow evil to happen?

For someone who’s requesting blind faith, not only does his basic nature not make sense, but allows all sorts of physical evidence to exist which greatly contradicts just about every book supposedly written by him?

How unreasonable is that? Believe in me, but here’s a couple of catches:

1. All my books will contradict themselves as well as most empirical/scientific evidence, especially if you interpret it literally (and why wouldn’t you?)
2. Make sure you pick the right religion. You’ll need more than faith to figure that one out. You’ll actually have to rationalize which religion best represents the truth.
3. While you’re searching for the truth to pick the right religion, you’ll probably learn a little bit about the scientific method and other critical thinking techniques which are helpful in teasing out the truth and reality. They have fantastic track records and many great men have used these methods to learn a lot about how the universe really works. If the scientific method shows a false religion is false, then you should take heed. If the scientific method shows our true religion is false, you should ignore it. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you what the true religion is…

As you can see, your post ignited a power keg in me, but I need to go to sleep now.

BTW, If you come across any REALLY good arguments, please let me know. I’ve read a bit on the subject and I only keep stumbling on the same old tired arguments. (Lee Strobel’s book “The Case for Faith” is especially insipid. He BARELY scratches the surface on the subject.)