I don't want to turn this into a religious debate or anything but here's my stance on Christianity. Assuming that all the events of the Bible took place exactly as they are written, and God absolutely is as Christians describe him, which is all-knowing, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, righteous, "perfect", etc. Then the whole thing falls apart from the very beginning. Why? Because if you are to believe these characteristics of God, then you have to believe that before God ever created mankind, he already knew that Satan would tempt Eve. He already knew that she and Adam would fall from grace, introducing sin into the world. That single event, according to scripture, is what officially put us as human beings "on the clock." It's the single event that birthed SOOOO much tragedy, suffering, abhorrent acts of vile, despicable cruelty. It's the single event that introduced mortality, which has given way to sickness, suffering, death, etc.....and I'll be damned if God didn't go ahead and go through with it anyway. Now, here's my question. Does it make ANY logical sense to you, that a God that possesses the characteristics that Christians profess him to have, would have willingly gone through with creating mankind WITH the knowledge that it was all going to lead to this?? That doesn't seem very merciful to me at all. The merciful thing to have done was to never create us in the first place. The logical and just thing to have done was to say "you know what, maybe this isn't such a good idea."
Or I could just quote George Carlin when he said "As soon as they introduced a talking snake, I knew it was bull$hit."