“Just wanted to add “I’ve never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.” - Robert Heinlein through Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land”
You are assuming that God is intelligent and rational. Obviously, our God isn’t very smart. If God were, it would be able to communicate “The Plan” much more efficiently than it has. For example, we are left to wonder whether there really is a heaven or hell, or a purgatory, or any afterlife at all. A smart omnipotent supreme being knows how to relay that information to its subjects, let’s say, by implanting that knowledge in the genetic code to make it, or maybe putting on a cosmic dog-and-pony show in plain view for all mankind every generation or so. Our God apparently doesn’t believe it is necessary to show up more than once or twice ever.
God left it for us to wonder why the Islamists are so wrong in killing the infidels, when the Judeo-Christian Bible tells us in Leviticus and the rest of fo the Torah to kill the infidels, such as adulterers, and worst of all, disrespectful children. A smart God would have explained the difference to us.
This God has a lot of explaining to do. Like why it is so needy as to require worship from humans in the first place. For an omnipotent supreme deity it is pretty insecure.
I guess I’m basing all of my comparisons on a faulty assumption then. Then again, what we define as rationality may not be the same for a supreme being.
A careful reading of Romans Chapter 1 answers your question. Part of this section tells us:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse”
The fact that men and women refuse to chalk up what they see to the Creator, is not God’s fault, it is man’s. And He holds them accountable. Once you are able to ascribe creation to the Creator (the one spoken of in the Bible), the things that you expressed you do not now know for sure (the existence of heaven, hell, etc.), begin to become knowable.