Sounds totally rational to me. I'd honestly probably do the same if I was born Catholic :P

I believe He judges us based on what we choose to do with the hand we are dealt, rather than judging us based on whether or not we were lucky enough to be born into the right religion.
The implication of that, IMO, is that if someone's best efforts and most honest investigations lead them to believe in some other god or even no god at all, then so be it. If that's their best effort, they deserve just as much reward for it as anyone does. And where our best efforts didn't lead us to the absolute truth, I believe we will be taught after we die, as mentioned in 1 Peter 4:6. The end result is complete fairness for everyone. I think everyone will have the chance to choose according to knowledge -- not just according to uneven possibilities.

I don't actually agree with the whole "never ending agony" spiel. Honestly I think that doctrine reeks of political manipulation, and I'm sure the concept of hell was greatly exaggerated during the Dark Ages, when Christianity was used as a weapon by godless theocrats to keep people in line.
Besides, mathematically, that doesn't even make sense. If a person's sins are finite, an eternity of punishment would be objectively unfair. And God is always described as being just and merciful.
Further, I don't believe that Judgment is as simple as whether you believe in God, or whether you consider yourself a Christian at the time you die. If it was, it would be a very simple matter and God wouldn't make such a big deal out of telling us that we don't possess the information required to judge others. The fact that He retains judgment for Himself, along with other doctrines and arguments, tells me that God considers every part of our being. Every choice.

For the record, I don't think I'd agree with that comment from snowpanther. I think evil exists naturally. There can't be good if there isn't evil. There can't be choice if there aren't alternatives. Hell (meaning whatever it is taken to mean) exists only because God doesn't force people to live with Him forever if they don't want to.
That's where it starts and ends -- our freedom to choose. Supposing there were alternatives (which may or may not be the case), it is evident that God believes that the potential we have as His children is well worth the price to realize it. And I agree with Him 100% on that.

You already know the answer to that, as you said before. People have to be able to choose. If evil is an impossibility, freedom to choose is hollow and meaningless. There would be no freedom and no independence. No progress or growth.
Sure, I suppose snowpanther's comment might have been worded better. e.g. "watches over" instead of "protects." But there's no reason to think that God is any less attentive toward someone who dies young.

My point stands. Just because a God-figure doesn't stop every single bad thing doesn't mean he never does anything at all. Reality very rarely exists in such extreme black-and-white.
And just because you don't like the possibility that people can make their own choices doesn't mean they can't.
Stop trying to make everything so extreme. Truth and beauty is in balance.

Guest's comment wasn't wrong. Just because he/she didn't list every possible abnormality doesn't mean it's not true that XY = man and XX = woman.

snowpanther's comment doesn't imply that those thousands that died weren't under God's care...
The idea that God has to protect everybody from every bad thing or else he can't exist is a false dichotomy.
Or, as you might say, "typical atheist logic"
:P

Yep. I'm done trying to communicate. Sorry for the bother :P

Gee you really are thick, aren't you?
Can't even take a hint without trying to project your insecurity and fanaticism onto me. smh. And no, actually, I'm well beyond 15. Maybe when I was 15 I would have been more like you, but I moved past that quite a while ago after I figured out how useless and counterproductive it was.
It's clear you're beyond help at this point. Hopefully someday you will learn the virtues of an open mind.

So the culture of "I'm right, and you can go f*** yourself" lives on.
Just wait until you're older and wiser and can't figure out why liberals and conservatives are still bickering like schoolchildren.
Martin Luther King Jr. would be disappointed in this country. His ideals have failed.

No, I'm actually not having a hard time with my own position at all, actually. Not sure why you think I am. I know exactly where I stand.
What I'm having a hard time with is understanding why you're so dead-set on making this a left vs right, good vs evil thing that you are either incapable of or unwilling to respond to the main point I've been making this whole time. A point that's not about LGBT rights or about abortion. You're so focused on the issues that you can't step back and see the bigger picture -- the course of our culture.

That's just the thing. If everyone's supposed to "get used to it", then we'll never learn anything. We'll never get past it.
We shouldn't "get used to" mockery, insult, dismissal, and polarization.
We shouldn't "get used to" this outdated concept of good vs evil, where both sides view the other as too evil and/or ridiculous to be taken seriously.
What good could that possibly accomplish? We'll just keep bickering and protesting and hating and voting for people like Donald Trump. That's not the world I envision.
But if that's fine with you, I suppose it's your choice.

Personally I'd much rather find myself "defending homophobes" than attacking people who dare question my opinion. But maybe that's just me.

Why does "the likes of smokeythebear" not get the right to define what is normal, but you and nightshade do?
If you guys want to talk about what is "the past" and what is "the future", I'm curious: In which would you place the tendency to demonize, marginalize, and make fun of people who disagree with you?
Is that part of the big, bright future you say you're fighting for? Because at this rate, all I see in the future is more of the same. We have learned nothing.

You've gotten yourself so excited that another thing you fail to realize is that in this conversation I've never actually endorsed or identified with the pro-life position in the first place, so your assertion that I have some "original agenda" to "have power over someone else" is silly in even more ways than normal.
You're assuming that just because I don't agree with you, I must be evil, bigoted, and some far-right fundamentalist. So that's how you're treating me. And that's why our culture isn't getting any better. We don't listen or attempt to understand to others, but we demand that they listen to and understand us. We learn nothing.

And you're still missing the point, and you're still ignoring my main argument. You're still ignoring everything else I've said in order to hone in on one isolated statement with a perceived weakness. You're still forcing me to take the contrary position. Is that really the world you want to live in? The world where left and right argue endlessly? That's what I'm trying to say is wrong.
To clarify yet again: You're right; I am intentionally mixing up topics. I'm demonstrating that that's the same thing that you and abel did to "pro-life" and "pro-family" -- you took them out of context, pointed out that they didn't apply to other situations, and therefore stated that the label was a lie. The same thing I did to "pro-choice." If what I did was wrong, then what you and abel did was wrong for the same reasons.