> Which is exactly why I don't understand the argument I've heard many times as to why God doesn't just make his existence plainly obvious with regularly scheduled miracles or something. Some people have told me that God respects our free will, so he leaves it up to us to choose to believe in him or not. But that's patently ridiculous. Only the very first step is belief in God. The rest of the steps are acceptance and belief in his teachings. However, it's that VERY FIRST step that is the hardest of all of them by an insanely huge margin. People could know with absolute certainty that God exists and *still* exercise their free will to do whatever they pleased rather than follow God's teachings. I'm sure that even if God routinely revealed himself and his nature to everyone, there would *still* be plenty of people going to hell just because they're either headstrong, stupid, insane, or just plain infinitely contrary. So what's the issue?
>

Interesting off-shoot: a focal point of Christian theology is that this pretty much happened, right? Lucifer and a host of angels, who had direct, undeniable knowledge of God, deliberately WENT AGAINST HIM. Adam and Eve also had direct knowledge of God and still fell from grace. A ton of other people in the Bible who had knowledge of God seem to do the opposite of what He tells them to do (e.g. Moses or Jonah). So why not reveal himself to everybody?

Stephen