God doesn't want robots -- He just wants you to do whatever He says.

The argument for why God doesn't just take everyone to heaven is that He gave humans free will. He wants people to choose to love Him, and doesn't want to force anyone to love Him. He doesn't want robots.

I can understand the not wanting to force people to love Him. I don't get the not wanting robots part. The whole reason for Jesus as a Savior is because God is a Holy God, and can only tolerate perfection. People are not perfect in any sense, having inherited the Adam nature. Depending on how far one's theology takes this, everything you do is tainted with sin, no matter how "good" it is. As a penalty for the sin and disobedience, Jesus took on humanity's punishment, thus satisfying the wrath of God.

If God can only tolerate perfection, and sin is essentially going against God or some form of disobeying God, and thus God can only tolerate sinless creatures (for those are the perfect creatures) and the only way to be sinless is to do exactly what God wants ... isn't the thing that God wants the same as a robot? Someone who does exactly what He wants?

Because that's exactly what a robot is: it's something that does exactly what the creator commands.

And then if the robot does not behave as the creator commands, it is declared defective, and is either fixed, or trashed. Perhaps melted down in a burning fire, and thrown into the scrap heap.

I don't even know how to title this one.

I recently (and by recently, I mean in the last five minutes) on another blog that essentially stated that God couldn't restore someone's faith by a miracle, because then the person could no longer have faith. Instead, the person would essentially have knowledge that God existed, which would've removed the person's free will ...

So, is the conclusion here that if God provides some sort of miracle in order to restore a person's faith, God has removed that person's free will?

Can I now argue that God removed the free will of the Apostles, since the biggest turning point in their faith was the miraculous resurrection of Jesus? And since Paul received a vision of Jesus -- also a miracle -- he also no longer had free will?

Because the faith of both Paul and the Apostles was jump-started by some sort of encounter with a resurrected Jesus. Which was a miracle. Their faith never would've happened, otherwise.

Things apparently only I wonder about.

I was out shopping with my roommate this weekend, as we had some coupons set to expire soon. As we were leaving a store, I asked her the following: "Do you ever wonder how often conservative Christians get disappointed that a thunder storm is just a thunder storm, and not the second coming of Jesus?"

Surprisingly, this is not something she has ever wondered.