[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

your life would have no meaning. You would have to do what you were told and your personal freedom would be gone.

So what meaning does my (and similarly, your) life have, that would be stripped away by the simple act of meeting a god? That god, presumably being omnipotent, would have the power to make me do what I was told, but unless he did so, freedom, free will, and my own actions would not be affected. You seem to expect that I would be compelled to do this god's bidding, just because I was aware that he was a god—this is nonsensical. Look to the mythologies of ancient Scandanavia, Greece and Rome, rather than Christianity to see why that assumption is erroneous.

Originally Posted by Ken Wittlief

BTW, Ive never met a single adult in my life who told me that Santa Claus had been in touch with them. In fact I have never met any adult who belives there is a man at the north pole living with elves and raindeer

but 90% of the world population believes there is a God of one sort or another, and those who claim a personal interaction has occured have very similar experiences.

Are we making the appeal to popularity again? Remember that correlation is not equivalent to causation.

Originally Posted by Ken Wittlief

one of the problems with this is the concept that God is all knowing.

Does that mean God knows everything about the present state of the universe, including people

or do we include the future? Does God know what we are going to do, before we do it?

I dont think He does, because that also negates our freewill. If God knows what we will do as individuals, before we decide to to those things, then we are programmed and we have no real choice - no freewill.

I think God knows what we are capable of doing, both good and bad - He knows what our limitations are - we cannot sprout wings and fly, one man cannot grow enough food to feed the whole world - one man cannot care for all the sick and elderly

and I think God is able to interact and deal with any situation that we might create

but I think we really are free - that God does not know what we will do until we decide ourselves.

Neither you, nor Thomas Aquinas can have it both ways; you either believe God is omnipotent, or do not. (This is the cop-out that I footnoted earlier.) To satisfy Christian dogma, it is necessary that God be omnipotent (or else the dogma would be wrong...imagine that), and yet, you propose that there is a power which God does not possess. He would therefore not be omnipotent. You instead propose that God is very powerful—that's fine, and well supported in other mythologies, but it isn't a traditional Christian idea. It might be possible to skirt this issue by saying that God chooses to disregard certain information, (which he, through omnipotence, would be able to access) and this creates a condition of free will. But that would mean that God could change his mind, and snap his fingers (or twirl a wand, or click his ruby-slippered heels, or whatever he does to make stuff happen) and make free will vanish. Do you consider the spontaneous elimination of free will to be a real threat to your personal freedom?

Originally Posted by Ken Wittlief

But to look at this from a larger perspective, whether or not we understand why God has done the things He choose to do, has no effect on whether or not He exists.

If I dont understand the tax laws, or how to file my tax return, or if I think the IRS is unfair, that does not make the IRS dissapear, and it does not make me exempt from paying my due tax.

Aren't you forgetting something? The fact that we can easily show that IRS exists (what's written on the tax form—"IRS", and a number which you can call to ask "does the IRS exist"); there is no such contact information on God's purported work, no direct line to the divine.

The whole point is that you expect us to presuppose the existence of God, and use that as the justification for the things you advocate (most prominently, belief in God). This is a circular argument.