Peter, a third of the angels rebelled and fell, so, yes, there is free will in Heaven.  We are not automatons.  It will be interesting to see how free will humans live in a Heaven and Earth made new.  Perhaps that's what the whole redemption process was in preparation for.

Marc, now you're getting into predestination and "God's perfect will" vs. His "passive will"--doctrines that have been debated for 2,000 years.  Let's just say that I believe that God has a way of giving us "the benefit of the doubt."  Like a parent giving a child a curfew--on one hand, the parent knows that particular child will break it; on the other hand, the parent gives the child the benefit of the doubt and chooses to trust the child.

Koroush, you're asking things I've already answered upthread, and you're also putting words in my mouth that I never said.

Yes. It has to be that way, doesn't it? As Mark Twain put it: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” I did mean to be kindly too, in the sense that religious people are genuinely -- sincerely, not hypocritically -- moved, uplifted, by their beliefs. Their Light can shine brightly, fiercely even. Which, of course, means that their Dark side can... 

Anyway, it's fascinating, how certain religious people, perhaps even the majority[?], can be relatively free from a gross mythology as a conscious quotidian concern, whereas a believer like Eric Jansen -- or at least as shown in his posts, because I don't suggest I know anything truly about him -- continually resorts to another absolutely indemonstrable reality (the fantasy land you labelled, Koroush) in order to understand and explain the reality we all commonly experience.

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But Adam had no knowledge of good and evil before he ate the apple so how could he know that he was doing something wrong?!

The second part of my post was referring to -- not picking on Eric Jansen, but he's offered up his own posts, so... -- Mr. Jansen's reliance on Christian mythology (e.g., "a third of the angels rebelled and fell") to understand, explain, and even dispute as a thing that I find fascinating, in part because I do not in my personal life truck at all with Evangelicals. The many Christians I know are a few degrees more substantive than nominal and (hence?) their religious beliefs are relatively private and benign and would, even at their most respectful of ancient Christian traditions, consider the real relevance of heavenly realms, oh, roughly nil. But that seems far from the case for Evangelicals. Fascinating, and frightening, because the level a believer is willing to mythologize reality is directly proportional with the risk his beliefs carry to harm others who don't share the same mythology.

Well, Mark Baptiste, I guess we see now why there weren't more Bible-believing Christians who wanted to answer your original post question!  : )

To those who seem horrified or shocked that a Christian (who's for years read a Bible that taught western civilization to "Love your enemies" and to care for widows and orphans) should actually believe in a good God with a good plan for those He calls children, I say--

Perhaps it was my mistake to answer some questions with accepted (though abbreviated) Bible theology and other questions with my own fill-in-the-gap theories (even though I thought I gave plenty of disclaimers).  Perhaps this topic was too deep for such speculation and shorthand.  And I guess when I spoke of "God," I should have realized that while I was thinking of a supremely intelligent and advanced being (though "advanced" is certainly the wrong word, it does bring to mind a more correct visual), others would fall back to their "old white guy in the sky" caricature.  (When God let Moses glimpse Him, He shielded his eyes and only let him see the afterglow of His light.  A far cry from Zeus turning into a bull or whatever.)  Shorthand can sound silly when those talking have different mental images of the terms being shorthand-ed.

For instance, I don't know if you exactly subscribe to the theory Mr. Byrne presented earlier of the universe creating itself because of, you know, math.  To me, that sounds ridiculous, but I'm sure the longer, more detailed explanation is more compelling.

A lot of this discussion, at its core, comes down to some thinking the universe came into existence by chance and chaos, while others (me, at least) think it came into existence on purpose by an intelligent designer.  Some might see those as equally possible and reasonable, even though there's no "put it on the table in front of me" evidence to prove or disprove either.  I wonder--would they even look any different?  If advanced aliens time-traveled back to the beginning of the universe, they would probably see the same thing no matter which cause was accurate.

Science should be based on all available evidence, wouldn't you agree?  As a modern American who went to high school and college and reads and has the Internet, etc., I have been exposed to a lot of the evidence for a godless, chaotic universe springing spontaneously into existence.  The difference being that I am also open to other evidence that leads me to believe in God the Creator and Jesus the Savior.  That evidence is:

Personal--Certainly, this is evidence only to me; I cannot drop it in a box in front of you.  But I have seen the supernatural, I have experienced healings, I have had prayers answered that were ridiculously specific and could only be truly from God or the wildest of coincidences.

Testimony--I have heard amazing testimonies of others, of their healings, and their miracles, of the dead raised and even limbs regrown on the mission field--in the name of Jesus.  (And not from those given to hyperbole.)  Sure, testimony is considered the least accurate evidence in a trial...unless you have a million (or a billion) people agreeing on the same thing.  Then, it should at least be considered.

Historical--That so many cultures with a written language (and others through verbal tradition) have an account of a worldwide flood that killed all except for one man (and in some accounts his family) is very compelling.  (Even if you never believe in God, it seems clear that SOMETHING big happened.)  Some Bible stories being seemingly preserved in the Chinese written language would be another fun fact.

Math--That Jesus is foretold throughout the Old Testament (written down over 2,000 years by almost 40 different writers) through over 300 different prophecies to be the Messiah defies the odds so much that for even 6 or 7 of them being fulfilled in one man--there aren't enough numbers on your calculator.  It would have to either be true or a deliberate fabrication by the priestly class of the time, which is unlikely since they rejected Jesus.  (And it would read like a hodgepodge, which it does not.)

The discussion has been reduced to "Science vs. Faith," but, as I said before, my faith is based on someone I know, the God who introduced Himself into my daily life for 37 years now.  I'm looking at all the evidence.  If you're only looking at half the evidence, perhaps you're not being scientific enough.

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There's so many suitable explanations to answer this that are more likely than 'it's supernatural!'

The most obvious one being that if Jesus is fictional, then it becomes very easy for the tales being told about him to jibe with whatever the authors decide.

It only becomes more difficult if you assume Jesus lived and the Gospels were written down as things really happened there and then (which even Christians agree didn't happen; the Gospels are written from memory by true-believers decades after the purported fact). And even then, if Jesus was a charlatan how difficult was it for him to tailor things to match what was in the Old Testament? The Old Testament prophecies that a king will enter Jerusalem mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey (make your mind up).

The Gospel makes it clear that Jesus was a scholar of scripture. Presumably he knew the prophecies. Does it then prove anything that someone, who wanted to present himself as fulfilling the prohecies of the Old Testament, took steps to match up with those prophecies? This seems like a truism. Unless the miracle is for a grown man to ride on a donkey foal, which is quite the trick.

Well, yes. There was an Ice Age. The ice melted. Bodies of water that were dammed by glacial ice flowed into areas that were populated. Various cultures wrote about these localized floods, extrapolating them into worldwide floods.

Question: How would these various cultures determine a flood is worldwide without a means of global communication, satellites, or flight?