"I want to be an astrophysicist to prove God is real using science."

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Another issue is that if God is beyond human comprehension it would be impossible to prove such a Supreme Being exists, since in order to comprehend God one would have to be omniscient in the first place. If I were to be omniscient enough to comprehend God, that would make me God.

To know God is to claim omniscience, to question God's existence, therefore, would be to take the more humble path.

Acknowledging God's presence isn't the same as comprehending God.  Knowledge and comprehension are very different things.

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My post appeared to garner significant reaction in my absence.

Maybe the Syrian War example wasn't the best example, given potential unintended consequences of suddenly stopping a war, but if an omnipotent god existed I'm sure he could figure it out. Add to that most the people getting killed are cannon fodder and collateral damage, not the ones who caused the conflict, it wouldn't be someone else swooping in to solve "their" problem.

But right now this same forum is full of people denouncing leaders in the Catholic Church for their lack of action in regards to the sexual abuse within the church. If the god they believe in existed, he'd be just as guilty. The "you shouldn't expect other people to swoop in and fix your problems" defense isn't really valid when you're talking about helpless children.

How is God guilty for what human beings do on their own free will?

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My post appeared to garner significant reaction in my absence.

Maybe the Syrian War example wasn't the best example, given potential unintended consequences of suddenly stopping a war, but if an omnipotent god existed I'm sure he could figure it out. Add to that most the people getting killed are cannon fodder and collateral damage, not the ones who caused the conflict, it wouldn't be someone else swooping in to solve "their" problem.

But right now this same forum is full of people denouncing leaders in the Catholic Church for their lack of action in regards to the sexual abuse within the church. If the god they believe in existed, he'd be just as guilty. The "you shouldn't expect other people to swoop in and fix your problems" defense isn't really valid when you're talking about helpless children.

How is God guilty for what human beings do on their own free will?

An omnipotent god is responsible for literally everything that happens. Presumably, even if it chooses not to intervene in the dominoes it set up after knocking the first one down, it still arranged it such that some people would want to engage in child abuse.

That same logic could be applied to any other sinful act, which humans bear personal responsibility for simply by virtue of us having free agency.  Lacking that free agency, humans would be perfect, rational, moral actors operating under the direct hand of God.  But then life would amount to nothing more than a one-man puppet show, and any dialogue about ethics would be rendered moot.

There is a difference between God's active will and God's passive will.  God's passive will does not signify approval of our own misdeeds.

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If the creator is unwilling to stop evil, what is the point of believing in such a "person".
I always find it strange that theists who believe that the creator is three separate males
(and no females) refer to this creator using the singular. If this creator three, how can this
creator be one? Three does not equal one, unless truth is not truth, and I guess I must be
pretty stupid because I think that truth is truth and believing in three separate persons is
polytheism* and that's the truth.

*not that polytheism is necessarily worse than theism.

Anyway, the point is simply that religion is useless if we can do whatever we want.

The consubstantial relationship between the three Divine Persons of the Trinity is not polytheism.  Each is part of one God.

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If the creator is unwilling to stop evil, what is the point of believing in such a "person".
I always find it strange that theists who believe that the creator is three separate males
(and no females) refer to this creator using the singular. If this creator three, how can this
creator be one? Three does not equal one, unless truth is not truth, and I guess I must be
pretty stupid because I think that truth is truth and believing in three separate persons is
polytheism* and that's the truth.

*not that polytheism is necessarily worse than theism.

Anyway, the point is simply that religion is useless if we can do whatever we want.

The consubstantial relationship between the three Divine Persons of the Trinity is not polytheism.  Each is part of one God.

Isn't everything "part of God"? Anyway the whole concept is bizarre and is only the result of an obvious over-literal view of the Bible. This "god" is always referred to in the singular and we are, if you believe the Bible, created in the image of god. If that were true.. the image of god is one person, so the whole idea of the Trinity isn't even supported by the Bible anyway which contradicts itself (at least if taken literally). Figuratively speaking I may have different parts to myself, and a person can have a multiple personality disorder, but a person is a person and not any more. So, if you take the Bible figuratively this being could have disparate personalities but not three separate bodies. The point is that there are not three literal persons. I still don't see how this wouldn't be polytheism and I am not the only one saying that.. it is an old controversy.
The trinity was invented long ago and it was political. Another problem is the idea that a finite being can conceptualize an infinite being. You can't put the infinite, by definition in a box, nor can you put the infinite in three separate boxes. In anthropomorphizing god aren't you simply creating this god in a human image? Thus human creates god and not the reverse.

The doctrine would only be polytheistic if each member of the Trinity was a separate god, but instead they are parts that make up the whole.  I think the best analogy for the Trinity is time.  Time is past, present, and future.  There are not three separate times; each part of the whole of time is by nature time.  Likewise, space is height, width, and depth.  Water exists in a liquid, solid, and gaseous state.  There are tangible differences in all these things, but they all form parts of a whole while fulfilling a different meaning or purpose.

When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was not talking to himself.  The Son did not create Heaven and the earth, and the Father is not the one who played the role of the sacrificial lamb in Jesus' atonement.  The Holy Spirit is not a separate being, but rather God's power in action.  The Son is what sent the Holy Spirit.  They are distinct in their relations to each other and how each one proceeds from the other, but each subsists within the godhead and fulfill God's active will - which is God's plan for the whole of creation.

That, at least, is as much as our finite minds might be able to comprehend.  If God was capable of being fully understood, then He would be too small to worship.

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My post appeared to garner significant reaction in my absence.

Maybe the Syrian War example wasn't the best example, given potential unintended consequences of suddenly stopping a war, but if an omnipotent god existed I'm sure he could figure it out. Add to that most the people getting killed are cannon fodder and collateral damage, not the ones who caused the conflict, it wouldn't be someone else swooping in to solve "their" problem.

But right now this same forum is full of people denouncing leaders in the Catholic Church for their lack of action in regards to the sexual abuse within the church. If the god they believe in existed, he'd be just as guilty. The "you shouldn't expect other people to swoop in and fix your problems" defense isn't really valid when you're talking about helpless children.

How is God guilty for what human beings do on their own free will?

You could make that same argument about a person, but no one would. If I sat and watched someone get raped or murdered and could have stopped it, but didn't, no one would view "people have free will" as an excuse for my inaction. Most every religious person would agree it would be a sin for a person to not intervene in a situation like that if they were able. People don't/shouldn't have the free will to murder and rape other people. That's the whole reason we have governments and laws. Then of course why doesn't anyone care about the free will of the people having their lives taken from them or being violated?

If an omnipotent god did exist and didn't intervene, that wouldn't make people any less responsible for their own actions. It would just mean that he also bore responsibility for allowing things to happen when he could have stopped it, just as a person in the same circumstance would be held responsible.

If God intervened every time a person was going to make a wrong choice, then there would be no free will - or responsibility - for anyone at all.  The price we pay for our free will is that people will not always make the right choice.  But what is the alternative?  If God waved his magic wand every time we did something wrong, we would not have free will and we would not be human; we would be like robots controlled by a programmer who constantly overrides our thoughts and actions.  And if we were always in a state of comfort, then we would lack the will to turn to God at all.

Like RFayette said earlier in the thread, arguments from suffering only go so far because, ultimately, we are finite beings and therefore not in a moral or intellectual position from which to judge the creator of the universe.  But what we do know is that the world is not as it "should" be.  This is not the fault of God, but it is the fault of us who rebel against God and give in to our own carnal and selfish desires.