I want to be convinced - an experiment

Hey sarde, good to see that you're looking for answers and are going about it the proper way - i hope you find your answers and live happily ever after! And if you dont mind me asking, have you tried seeing what the beliefs of other religions are and what similarities/differences exist between them and Christianity?I'm a Muslim myself and if you'd be interested in how i justify my beliefs - both to myself and people i meet (i like using science as the evidence u people have been on about), i'd only be happy to elaborate...

my personal way of lookin at that issue, is that "bad things" (i use the inverted comma's because what may seem bad at first, may turn out to be something good in the long-run) are a challenge, in a sense, to a person - and he/she can then go about coping with the challenge in differnt ways.. and this is where jihad comes in - u struggle to do the right thing.. and if u do overcome the challenge, u come out a stronger person than u would have been without the "bad thing" happening to u.. as regards why "good things" happen to bad people, well, u could say that's a challenge for them (by the way, i dont think there are such things as good people and bad people.. there's good in all of us and there's bad in all of us - fair enough, some people show more good than others - but it doesnt mean that they'll be good for ever.. same goes for people who show more bad) - they could use the "good thing" (eg money) for right (eg charity) or wrong (eg drugs or something) yeah, that thought disturbed me for quite a bit - but one way of looking at it is.. if someone never believed in the idea of heaven, why should they be allowed in? "but what about people who never got the chance to experience religion (due to upbringing, say)" - well, God knows best and he'll decide on their fate.. as Muslims, we're told to spread the word of our religion to people (strictly by peaceful means - "There is no compulsion in religion" [Koran 2:256]) and whether a person choses to believe us or not, is a matter entirely up to them.. (and of course, "Come to Islam or else you'll be miserable after u die" is hardly sufficient on our part..) interesting.. yeah, i like your honesty and dont blame you one bit for that thought - i'd rather not get into the whole media and politics thing but to answer the thing on "extremist Muslim terrorism", it has just as much to do with Islam as the murder of 6 million Jews in the second world war had to do with Christianity...oh, and u were spot on with the jihad thing at the end

Good post, Stephen - a lot of very good points made