Would an omniscient god reward my atheism?

Well he will know in advance when you sneeze next week, the subsequent "God Bless You" verbally delivered by the legless and armless nun sitting right next to you at the hospital ER waiting room will be made moot because you are a godless heathen!

Full disclosure: I am a goddessless heathen myself.

Now, I don't mean to nit-pick, but I think the important question you've raised here is... can a limbless nun be said to be "sitting"?

You're goin' to Hell, Boy . . . don't try to weasel out of it . . .

I would assume that her "sitting" was an alleged divine miracle.

I think it more likely she was wedged or perhaps "chocked" into position by a third party, and maintains an appearance of sitting using a combination of muscle control and friction.

and of course gravity...

Sigh... I guess the real topic should be...
"Why won't christians respond to my obvious bating?"

I would like a serious response to the question though, since I imagine there may be a least one out there who would say "Yes".

My corollary question is if you were truly christian how could you enjoy heaven knowing that well meaning Eorl is burning in hell for eternity?

Icing on the cake for most, I reckon!

My first response was a joke, sort of, but it was also not a joke. Any doctrinally pure theist will not be likely to say yes, because belief and faith are indispensible components of their creed. You may get atheists in here to argue in the abstract, or agnostics to argue the plausibility of the case--but the truly religious are just likely to ignore you, because the notion is antithetical to what believe. They probably do suspect you of wanting to bait them, and even if they don't, why would they want to argue one of the core premises upon which they base their entire world view?

Agreed.

It's unfortunate for them, I feel, because it removes the option of a truly all loving all knowing god and leaves you with a jealous petty tyrant who demands to be called omniscient and benevolent for the sake of it's ego. It's like Christians desperately want their god to be one thing and are embarrassed to be stuck with something much more old fashioned.

Or to put it another way, all the grand ideas in Christianity are undermined by silly trivialities.

The early Christians incorporated a sect that held such a belief. That as a certain number of people will be born who can not, for one reason or another, believe in God, it is unfair to send them to hell when God is responsible for their existence. The Catholic (or Universal) Church, then very much a small minority sect itself, wiped out all other sects in a process most resembling evolution.

Yes. But I am Agnostic.

To me, this is some of prima facia evidence that this "god" is, in fact, a human construct. In the King James version, Exodus, Chapter 20, verses three through five:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

The old boy comes right out and says he is "a jealous god" [ignoring the implication that there may be another sort of god, and that therefore, he may not be unique--scripture is full of stupid passages such as this]--but worse, promising to blight the lives of several generations of innocents to slake this god's thirst for revenge.

Once, while i sat outside on a college campus, waiting for my friend to come out of class, i was approached by some of the religious predators who really like to work such a venue. I suggested to them that there is something terribly flawed about a doctrine which demands faith, but discounts works. The works (i.e., how you treat others) versus faith dynamic was "solved" relatively early in the history of the primitive church. Part and parcel with that was heresy such as Pelagianism was claimed to be. Pelagius was considered particularly dangerous because he insisted upon free will, and rejected the concepts of original sin and the necessity for "god's" grace to sanctify works. Pelagius held that works could redeem a man or woman's soul just as well as could faith and the receipt of grace.

This heresy (as it was held to be by the Roman church--the Orthodox church simply ignored the boy) was especially pernicious from the ecclesiastic point of view, because it removes the necessity for a hierarchical clergy to act as agents between man and god. The rejection of the concept of original sin was particularly odious to them, because it undermines the inferential claim that all men and women are inherent sinners and need the clergy for their spiritual salvation.

The Roman church mimicked the structure of the Empire at the time that imperial authority was crumbling in the western portion of the Empire. (Contrary to popular "history," the Roman Empire did not "fall" just because Alaric sacked Rome.) So that priests held the place of the magistrates, bishops mimicked the legates, cardinals held the place of consuls and the Pope stood in the place of the Caesars. In the Orthodox church, this hierarchy was also (eventually) created, but Ortodox bishops, metropolitans and patriarchs fulfilled an administrative function, and did not have the doctrinal authority possessed by officers of the Roman church. A metropolitan, for example, could challenge liturgical practice and even theological doctrine, and the reaction would be that the church would convene a synod of metropolitans and patriarchs to review the matter. This is exactly what happened when the Russian Orthodox metropolitan Nikon challenged liturgical practice in the mid 17th century. In the Roman church, the authority of the ecclesiastic hierarchy hardened over time. Ironically, the Protestants of the Reformation accused the Church of Pelagian heresy, even though many of the principles of the Protestant churchs were very similar to those advocated by Pelagius.

Faith must trump works, and man must be an inherent sinner, even in the Protestant churches, because otherwise the authority of the clergy is undermined, and begins to crumble as soon as anyone asserts that he or she can deal directly with god. This despite the claim that their boy Jesus said that the Kingdom of God lies within everyone. In the King James version, Luke, Chapter 17, versese 20 and 21:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

So, to my mind, the question is whether or not a clergy and liturgical practice are even needed--is anything needed other than a wise man or woman to guide each individual to that which allegedly already lies within them?

But you, my friend, are going to Hell--get used to it. You are condemned and cannot be saved on any account. In the King James version, John, Chapter Three, verse 18:

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Criticising human understanding and interpretations of God is like saying there cant be any grand cathedrals because you have found a mud hut.

This dichotomy in God's attitude and the position statements (in le bible) is easily explained if you think of God as a non-tenure position. Clearly some new got the job at the end of the jealous guys contract.

That was pretty hilarious, Boss.

So here I am, a bit late. A devout Catholic willingly falling for your bate because someone had to step up and say YES. If you truly had good intentions and an open mind to the possibility there was a God, I believe you would be rewarded for doing the best you could with what you were given, and I dont think Ionus and I are the only ones.

If god exists then bet your boots your part of his plan somewhere! I don't have any grasp on what rewards will get handed out down the track