My Self! I've created a monster!

As of late, my philosophy class has been discussing God's relation to happiness, love, and morality. I'm finding it challenging because I have such an unwavering faith in God's nonexistence that I have to first bypass. By the end of class I had this nice little theory relating to a question to do with God's commands and granting us free will (what's the point of letting us choose, but saying what we really ought to do? Why do we have free will if God has already decided what is holy and what is not [or at least pointed out to us what is holy and what is not. That's a whole other bag of worms.], an why are we presented with temptation and sin when God could just work them out of the world) but I never got to share it because my professor treats me like one of the kids who ALWAYS speaks. I get chosen only if I'm the last person with my hand up, and only one other time. And that is fucking ridiculous because that's how I've been regarded since the beginning, I don't actually get to speak as much as the people who are often called on. Yes, I put my hand up all of the time, but I know it's because if I only raise my hand once or twice, the chances of me being called on in any given are slim. Regardless, I love the class to death. We're generally quite intelligent (generally), and there isn't one person who dominates conversations.

My theory was jumpstarted by Descartes' idea that humans are set apart from animals in that we possess souls which are connected to our otherwise mechanical bodies though the pineal gland. From my knowledge, animals are not expected to follow God's word in any way because they are as mechanical and natural as the sun, the tides, or a rock. They are not expected to follow God, they are exempt from morality and are lacking in souls. For my purposes, I have speculatively decided that free-will and the soul are intrinsically linked (I don't believe any of what I'm talking about, but I'm suspending my disbelief to for the sake of argument because my brain is saying "God doesn't exist, this is pointless"). I decided to lump everything together into a simplistic theory of the soul. 1) The purpose of a soul is to grant consciousness, a by-product of which is free-will. 2) Human beings are the only possessors of souls. By my view, God desires to be worshipped. Worshippers require consciousness to exist, otherwise they would empty automatons who went though the ritualistic actions of worship without intent. For this reason, God had to grant his worshippers souls so they could truly love him. As stated above, souls also granted them free-will. Now, I'm not terribly familiar with The Bible (Read: at all) but I know that Adam and Eve were the first human beings. They were conscious. They possessed free will and could defy commands as proven by Eve eating the Apple of Knowledge (Or whatever the fuck it was called) - this lead to God punishing humanity for some horribly petty and bratty reason. I mean, in his wise holiness and great knowledge he punished humanity for the sins of one woman because he knew that it was a good idea because he is omniscient. Skipping ahead to know, humans are faced by sinful temptation every single day. Thanks to our free-will, nothing is preventing us from indulging save God's word (if you heed his words) and perhaps, if you believe it, an inborn and/or learned sense (Lets not get into Plato vs. Aristotle right this moment) of morality. Regardless of how we approach the decision-making process or where we draw knowledge from, we always have the option of breaking God's word. As we all know, this makes him extraordinarily displeased - which raises the question of why he doesn't just stop us? Why doesn't he simple exert his divine will and prevent us from performing sinful actions? For the sake of argument I am going to assume that he is TRULY omnipotent and omniscient. I believe that God doesn't reach down and directly influence our behavior because to do so would be to subjugate, and thus, tarnish, free-will and thus, the soul. Seeing as God is perfect, it is unthinkable that he would willingly unmake the crux of the that which he cares most about - the untarnished soul. In addition, if the soul is the source of the worshipper's ability to worship truthfully, God wouldn't want to deprive himself. If this person is a true worshipper they will not give into sin so intervention is not necessary. Those who would are clearly lacking the will to worship God despite his words and are thus unworthy of his love in the afterlife. The widespreadness of sin is, as I see it, not a natural state for the world to be in, but humanity's punishment for Eve's defience of God's single command. He's testing us. My French teacher is also testing me tomorrow so I need to stop this and begin studying. I may come back to this later, review, rewrite, condense down to points. I may not. We'll see boys. First some brief housekeeping notes I already made at the bottom:

I suppose God might have said "My Self! I've created a monster!"

Only a few of the many problems with my theory:

1) Why couldn't God make consciousness without free-will?

2) God is perfect. Why would he desire something so base as worship?

IN ADDITION, I have begun to instinctively capitalize the word God, a tendency which would have saved me from being docked spelling marks on multiple occasions by my unignorably religious Social 20 teacher. In a related field, I have noticed a tendency to capitalize the word Art without intending to.

White-haired girl wasn't in Psych today, but we DID have to evacuate the building ten minutes before the lecture finished because of an emergency. Wonder what it was. I'm sure I'l find out friday.

I apologize for forgetting about paragraph breaks for so long, feeling guilty, and then overusing them. I may not be a consistent lover, but at least I try to make up for past mistakes.