Ted’s given the matter some thought:
I don’t believe you’d get an affirmative answer, since those who disdain religion are generally not much interested in any sort of reasoning they would simply consider rationalization
However. I, a former Catholic turned agnostic would accept your explanation even if I cannot possibly agree with you.
God may very well exist, but in my opinion, if he does, he is either incompetent, disinterested, or a gamesman, with the latter quite likely making him the Devil himself. However, I personally am not only not hostile to Christianity, I believe it represents man’s only chance for long-term survival. It’s just that if you link Christian principles to God, you have the problem of God not practicing what he preaches.
Not wanting to categorically state that God is evil, I attribute his work to three possible scenarios (I admit there may be others):
1) God as Tabitha where he’s not fully in control of his powers, as with the young lady on Bewitched, and this we see around us is the result
B) God as scientist where he’s created any number of worlds and we’re his lab rats in a rather elaborate experiment to see what works.
3) God as frat president with life on earth being “hell week” before we gain full membership in his fraternity.
As you may notice, any of the above is a contrived situation. There is no need for us to have been created, and it’s an exercise in self-indulgence on God’s part that we are – a totally selfish act, for aren’t we better off if we’d never existed at all? The attendant anxiety alone makes that clear, I think.
Then there’s that whole business about the universe not being as orderly as some geniuses think, and the fact that seemingly random occurrences bring (often unexpected) devastation and accompanying misery. To what end? For what purpose? Is it good enough for you to say that we can’t know Big G’s thinking processes?
Actually, I tend to lean towards option (B) myself. That seems fairly obvious to me, given the constant mentions of separating wheat and chaff, sheep and goats, etc. But I don’t see anything inherently negative in that, indeed, it would tend to indicate that we are, indeed, created in his image.
Is it good enough for me to say that we can’t know God’s thinking processes? Yes, for me. I regularly encounter people who are simply incapable of grasping my thought processes and after many years I’ve finally learned to accept that they’re not intentionally being difficult, that they just can’t do it for whatever reason. I therefore have no problem believing that I have a similar inability to understand the way in which a Divine mind operates.