the radiometric, fossil and genetic evidence is quite conclusive. if 2 people come to two different results by examining the evidence, then at least one of them needs to revise his examination skills.
”Perhaps you have the wrong idea of the nature of evil.”
Perhaps. But perhaps you have the wrong one. Yours does not even allow for neutrality. It is like dropping a drop of ink into a huge swimming pool and then saying that the pool is full of ink. My bet is on you having the wrong idea of evil
Jesus is not really a middle ground. It still is either heaven or hell, the former requiring the complete acceptance and belief in unsupported dogma in face of evidence to the contrary. A middle ground would be a place other than heaven or hell for people, the majority of people on earth, who just go on about their lives while not buying into the jesus dogma. People like them still go to hell.
And the existence of Lucifer, even within judeochristian dogma, is debatable. Jews reject the notion of an independent agent opposed to God altogether, for them, Satan/the devil, is still a loyal servant of God, his job being testing people’s faith. The very name Lucifer is likely to be a mistranslation of a title given to a human king in the OT, which then was used to construct the Lucifer dogma of Christianity.
“_ God could have completely forgone creation. And most likely knowing the outcome, He did it anyway,_” What is it with this binary thinking? There is a third option, you know? Like, creating the universe in a way that it would not “turn sour”, which, by virtue of being omnipotent, would have been perfectly within his repertoire