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I haven't looked at the other thread you mentioned (I'll check it out later). I also haven't read Mere Christianity recently (I read it years ago). So I'll just address some of the comments you posted to me.

Combine God's potential with His granting free will. Then consider that granting as having been done so as to similarly unfetter the potential of His highest creatures.

That is a whole different subject, but since you brought it up... If God's creatures have failings (and we do), it's because we were created this way. You say it's because we were given free will. Our free will is so limited as to be negligible. With my free will I can choose what to eat, what to say, what to wear. Perhaps I can make a few moral decisions with my free will. I can choose to rob or not rob that store, kill or not kill someone, fight or not fight. I can make behavioral choices that may or may not affect my life. But in the more important things (what I consider more important), I have no free will at all. I can't choose not to die, or suffer, or cry, or feel pain. (What good God would deliberately allow his creatures to suffer and die?) My free will is only useful for the little things in my day-to-day life. If that's all it's good for, it's not very much. I'd much prefer that my free will had a broader range. The moral aspect of free will only pertains to fitting in with society. The religious will think it has afterlife consequences.

...gain an understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, and you may reconsider your assessment of what you call failures. I see those "failures" as consequences of tangible existence, creation if you will, arising out of The Potential.

Based only on these comments, if the laws of thermodynamics exist at all (and they do), it's because God -- however you think of him: Intelligent Designer, Creator, Higher Power, God of the Bible, whatever -- God designed and created thermodynamics and its laws. If there are any failures resulting from it, it is something that God was well aware of from the beginning. If he had wanted it to be different, it would be. That is a failure of God. The fact that we suffer and die is also a failure of God.

Free will in action: I'll check out the other thread later tonight. Maybe I'll be able to offer something more (or maybe not).

BTW, I'll pick up a copy of Mere Christianity. It's worth re-reading.

You raise some interesting questions. From experience, I really doubt there are many others who will care what we two discuss here, but it might be usefull discussing these ideas in open forum.

I brought up thermodynamics not so much from an energy standpoint (as medved misunderstood) but from a entropy standpoint -- so called "wasted" energy.

I raise the issue because you seem to hold God accountable for His nature. It is frequently accepted on faith that "God can do anything" -- even considered blasphemous to think any other way. But what if that belief is incorrect? That it's a mortal attempt to understand God on our terms and not His; our misunderstanding of perfection and omnipotence?

To rail against God because of the way the world works may actually be to miss the concepts of existence and its challenges altogether.

Take pain for instance. Without physical pain we experience all sorts of damage. Ask a leper. The same could apply to emotional pain -- indeed we know some are more leprous than others in that arena (as in the expression "Why knock your head against the wall?")

Without death, what value is there to life?
How is life sustained except by the cycle of life and death?
Would you prefer never having been given life so that you would know not death?
If yes, then why are you still here?
Your questions indicate a disatisfaction with the way God's world works. That doesn't make it imperfect. You may simply be measuring perfection by the wrong standard.

In thermodynamics, entropy is the reason perpetual motion machines can't be produced -- the potential (the idea if you will) differs from the physical realm like an Escher drawing differs from physical reality. To rant against the inability of perpetual motion may be seen on the same plane as being frustrated by an essence that maintains states -- the very thing that makes existence possible. You may be complaining of the way God works even though it is the most perfect way He can effect change.

It's possible that, and I'm sorry if, I've lost you. I think if you'd like to explore this idea I can make what I'm thinking clearer. Unlike medved, I won't keep trotting out the same old posts (or at least I'll try not to <G>).