Why are we alive?

No this is not going to be a self-pitying rant about "Why am I specifically alive?" or "Why are we all here," but rather a question on the intentions of God and other religious deities.

As a christian, I'm not even going to pretend to know what God wants. Historically, this "we can never know the will of God" thing has been very convenient for religious leaders, as they can spout all kinds of nonsense and just say that they could not understand the powers that be when people point out that they are wrong. However, I am going to make a case against one religious leader, Jonathan Edwards.

In his rather famously brutal speech "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God," Edwards makes some very emotionally compelling arguments (Apparently he had people weeping and contemplating suicide due to his speech), but the logical side of his arguments certainly needs some shoring up. For starts, Edwards constantly describes all the endless horrors that God has ready for unconverted men, and that he could at any time kill them, whether it be by withholding miracles or opening the earth beneath them or just shooting them with invisible divine bow and arrows. But why hasn't he?

In his speech, Edwards fails to mention any reason that God has not done so, other than the fact that no one knows what He is thinking. If God truly had no reason to hold off all this imminent death, then surely everyone who is reading this blog should not exist, as he would not have held off this death and thus our ancestors (and thus us) should never have existed to start with. Then why DO we exist?

Perhaps we exist because God is indeed not that angry at us. According to the Bible, God sent his only son in the form of Jesus Christ to pay for our sins because he loved us. It is also said that Jesus paid for every sin in the past, present, and future. To make such a claim, God would have to know the future, meaning that he would know about the people of Edward's time well before they were alive.

Admittedly, that argument (and any other argument made on this topic) is flimsy at best, because really we don't know much about our divine entities, probably because this mysteriousness is part of their attractiveness. Again, we do not know the will of God. But surely anyone with the time and sense to think through Edward's speech can tell that what he says does not reflect the will of God. Or maybe you think otherwise. Anyway, let me know in the comments. And please do not go crazy with about religion and all.