However true faith is not spoken with words alone. You must devote your entire life to Christ and his ways (give up sex, money, drugs, alcohol, ciggarettes, greed, pride, as well as be giving, loving, caring, truthfull). If there is no such thing as Christ, then you lived a "boring" life for nothing (boring as in by the worlds' standards of fun; think cars, fame, millions of $$, freedom to up and leave wherever and whenever you want, parties with beautiful women, etc.). If there is a Christ, then you showed an unbelieveable act of faith, by saying even though I can't prove he even exists, I'll hand my life over to him. That takes GUTS!

You can be a sinner, that's forgiven if you ask for forgiveness. You can do bad things, so long as you work toward stopping. All you have to do is ask Christ to "show you the way" and believe. Christ will show you the way by saying "follow closely in my footsteps" and you must obey, which takes faith.

~~Why does He punish some people for using the brain that he gave them... a brain that is designed to make decisions based on observations and one that would naturally ask for proof before committal?~~

No answer for ya there. Mario got me with these questions too.

~~If there is a 'Father of Lies' who would deceive us and thus ruin our chances of eternal salvation, why would an all powerful God allow him to exist and sabotage us like that?
If God allows this 'Father of Lies' to exist in order to test who is deserving of heaven and who is not, then why would an all-loving God be so cruel to put us to such a senseless test?
Why would He then punish the failure of such a test with eternal damnation? Even the cruelest dictatorships on Earth do not mete out such harsh punishments.~~

...either there is simply more to it than my biological brain is capable of understanding, or there truly is no Christ. A or B, it's a very personal choice. I can't offer you an acceptable answer...