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God said: He who believes in the Son has eternal life...Would God condemn men to everlasting torment for a decision that He made for them?

Men are already condemn to hell. Adam's race is under bondage. Our Savior came to call us out of our bondage just like He called the Israelites out of their bondage. The Israelites that left Egypt, despite their suffering, wanted nothing more than to go back to Egypt. God took them via the Red Sea just so they wouldn't go back. And when they saw what laid ahead they wanted to turn back to Egypt.

We're not unlike the Israelites except in one very important respect. The only thing that keeps us from wanting to go back to Egypt is the Holy Spirit. God specifically tells us that He will give us a new heart and spirit so that we will walk in His way. It's not our choice because if it was our choice we would choose Egypt.

John 3:16...What does the word "whoever" mean there? If God says that salvation is available to "whoever" believes, then how is He not lying

Read the entire text.

Joh 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Joh 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Joh 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Joh 3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
Joh 3:20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
Joh 3:21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God."

Everyone who believes in the Son has eternal life. Everyone who believes in the Son will not perish but have eternal life. The problem is that NO ONE WILL BELIEVE nor will they want to believe unless the Son is revealed to them. And the reason we don't want to believe is because we love the darkness. If we saw the light of God, we would try to kill it-which we tried to do. This is the very ugly nature of man and we might just as well accept it.

Augustine compares and contrasts the believers against the unbelievers in his Treatise of the Predestination of the Saints:

"Many hear the word of truth; but some believe, while others contradict. Therefore, the former will to believe; the latter do not will." Who does not know this? Who can deny this? But since in some the will is prepared by the Lord, in others it is not prepared, we must assuredly be able to distinguish what comes from God's mercy, and what from His judgment. "What Israel sought for," says the apostle, "he hath not obtained, but the election hath obtained it; and the rest were blinded, as it is written, God gave to them the spirit of compunction,—eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, even to this day. And David said, Let their table be made a snare, a retribution, and a stumblingblock to them; let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see; and bow down their back always." [Rom. 11.7.] Here is mercy and judgment,—mercy towards the election which has obtained the righteousness of God, but judgment to the rest which have been blinded.

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Let us, then, understand the calling whereby they become elected,—not those who are elected because they have believed, but who are elected that they may believe. For the Lord Himself also sufficiently explains this calling when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." [John 15.16.] For if they had been elected because they had believed, they themselves would certainly have first chosen Him by believing in Him, so that they should deserve to be elected. But He takes away this supposition altogether when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." And yet they themselves, beyond a doubt, chose Him when they believed on Him. Whence it is not for any other reason that He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," than because they did not choose Him that He should choose them, but He chose them that they might choose Him; because His mercy preceded them according to grace, not according to debt. Therefore He chose them out of the world while He was wearing flesh, but as those who were already chosen in Himself before the foundation of the world. This is the changeless truth concerning predestination and grace. For what is it that the apostle says, "As He hath chosen us in Himself before the foundation of the world"? [Eph. 1.4.] And assuredly, if this were said because God foreknew that they would believe, not because He Himself would make them believers, the Son is speaking against such a foreknowledge as that when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you;" when God should rather have foreknown this very thing, that they themselves would have chosen Him, so that they might deserve to be chosen by Him. Therefore they were elected before the foundation of the world with that predestination in which God foreknew what He Himself would do; but they were elected out of the world with that calling whereby God fulfilled that which He predestinated. For whom He predestinated, them He also called, with that calling, to wit, which is according to the purpose. Not others, therefore, but those whom He predestinated, them He also called; nor others, but those whom He so called, them He also justified; nor others, but those whom He predestinated, called, and justified, them He also glorified; assuredly to that end which has no end. Therefore God elected believers; but He chose them that they might be so, not because they were already so. The Apostle James says: "Has not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love Him?" [James 2.5.] By choosing them, therefore; He makes them rich in faith, as He makes them heirs of the kingdom; because He is rightly said to choose that in them, in order to make which in them He chose them. I ask, who can hear the Lord saying, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," and can dare to say that men believe in order to be elected, when they are rather elected to believe; lest against the judgment of truth they be found to have first chosen Christ to whom Christ says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you"? [John 15.16.]

The only reason we have faith is because God gives us faith. And the only reason we are given faith is so that we might testify to God's mercy and show this mercy through our good works by our belief. It is not anything we have done including anything we may "choose". All that we do is as filthy rags before God.

I'm sorry but no one has been able to reconcile the Scripture where God clearly states that He provides a way of salvation and it is man's to choose or reject with the Calvinist belief that God pre-selects those who He will save and picks those who will go to Hell. We are born with a sin nature, but we do not have to spend our lives enslaved to that sin nature nor do we have to spend eternity separated from God. The Scriptures clearly state that man has a choice.

Whenever there is a discrepancy between what God says and what man has chosen to believe, we always have to go with what God says. There is not one verse of Scripture that indicates that God makes the choice for man as to eternal destiny. Repeatedly, God says He has provided a way of salvation and it is up to man to choose whether to accept that way or reject it. When God says that it is not His will that any perish, we have to choose to either believe what He says or not believe what He says. If it's not His will that any perish, then He is not going to determine that some will perish and take their option to accept Christ away from them.

From what I've seen on this thread and on previous threads dealing with Calvinism, the impression I'm getting is that people who have this belief system want the responsibility for their eternal destiny taken out of their hands and handed to God. Unfortunately, nowhere in the Bible does God take responsibility for the decision that He has given to man to make. It's extremely risky to believe that one has no control over whether or not to accept Christ's death on the cross as payment for sin; it is taking the risk of a lifetime to go through life believing that we are totally helpless, that we are nothing more than robots, that God made us, tells us that He does not want us to perish, then cruelly decides, while telling no one that He is deciding and by leading people to believe that the decision is theirs, that certain people have been chosen to go to hell after all.

John Calvin, at the time of his death, admitted that he was wrong about atonement. It's too bad that those who still believe his errors haven't heard that he did, at the end, repent.