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Well, you don't want to use logic, you want to debate your opinions. Fine, let's do that. Please answer the questions would have been the proper way to approach the issue. Orders suck, and since I don't have to take them anymore, I tend to ignore them. Let's be civil.
I assume that because of the 'benevolent' billing, which claims an active concern about the wellbeing of humans, or at least believers. If you're saying benevolence is excluded, then I won't refer to it further in this discussion. (Meanwhile I'll feel free to.)
So what? A benevolent god should be active in the here-and-now, not later when it won't matter. Besides, as I understand it, humans are required to perform in the here-and-now, later being too late, so God should lead by example.
I'm not so sure. Omnipotence would certainly test my character, and I'm told I'm made in God's image; and if I were omniscient, that would give me an understanding guaranteed to change my character.
So you reject Isaiah 45:7? But where else can evil come from if there's only one God, only one Creator?
It does? I guess surviving a hit by Zeus' thunderbolt would be a Lucky Strike ... But Isaiah isn't a misquote, and I'm not misrepresenting its context. It's just an acknowledgement of monotheism. There are other examples as well:
Evil originated from Gods creation, he did not intend it, but because of free will it exists. In the active absence of God, there is evil. It ultimately comes from God as he created everything including the possibility of evil. If he withdraws from a person or city, the agents of evil fill the vacuum.
But in saying you "know" what it is you're going to buy doesn't leave any room for choosing at the grocery store. You're going to buy what you knew you're going to buy. UNLESS, that is, by "I know what it is I am going to buy" you simply mean, what you intend to buy, which of course isn't knowing.
No it doesn't, but it does make your choice inevitable, that is; conforming to what you foretold. Your choice HAS TO BE what you foretold. Unless, that is, your foretelling is on the fritz. Is your foretelling always 100% accurate?
That can't be right. For instance, the Garden story in Genesis never mentions sin, disobedience, original sin, the fall of man, death entering the world, the need of redemption or anything of the kind. Not once, not anywhere. Nor is the serpent identified with Satan, nor does he tell any lies. Instead we're told the reason why God kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden ─ lest they eat from the tree of life and become immortal (Genesis 3:22-23). And in Ezekiel 18 we're told very plainly and at length that sin can't be inherited. So generic sin is a later invention and contradicts scripture.
If it's God's creation, it can't be true that the absence of God = evil. Nor can life so created, 'red in tooth and claw' as Tennyson put it, be evil; rather, all must be exactly as God foresaw. The alternative which you propose is that God has willfully blinded [him]self so as to be subject to his own creation, time, hence is voluntarily neither omniscient nor omnipotent nor omnipresent nor perfect, nor even benevolent. So why, as Epicurus is said to have said, call [him] God?
I had these in mind. There may be more:
Free will is the ability to make critical choices, uh, freely. Omni, meaning many, all, potence meaning power
The Genesis account, at first doesn´t use the specific term sin, it uses disobedience. What was the result of disobedience ? among a number of other things, like death, was the knowledge of good and evil. sin. It specifically does declare the need of a redeemer. What do you think the bruising of heads and heels in the future is all about ?
Where does it say 'disobedience'?
In the Garden story? There was no disobedience. There couldn't be. Sin is a matter of intention, and Eve when she ate the fruit and Adam when he ate the fruit were each in a God-imposed state of not knowing good from evil. Therefore neither of them was capable of sin at the relevant time.
No, death was already in the world. This is unambiguous: the reason God kicked them out of the Garden was to prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life and becoming immortal. They were NOT already immortal. Death was already part of the system.
About the relationship of humans and snakes. But as I said, the snake told no lies, and gaining humanity the knowledge of good and evil is an excellent thing, whatever God's view of it in the story.
I only mention it to be fair.
But if you're right about God blinding [him]self as to the future, then [he]'s no longer omnipotent.