I told you so

I get told that I should start believing now. I need to believe in order to avoid hell. I need to believe before it's too late! 

Not all, but a lot of people who tell me this tell me that their version of the god myth has sent them to me (of course they call their version of the god myth God). It reminds me a little of a story I once heard. I've found it called the Parable of the Flood, the Drowning Man, The Parable of the Three Boats and a few other names. 

It goes like this:
A man was trapped in his house during a flood. He began praying to God to rescue him. He had a vision in his head of God’s hand reaching down from heaven and lifting him to safety. The water started to rise in his house. His neighbour urged him to leave and offered him a ride to safety. The man yelled back, “I am waiting for God to save me.” The neighbour drove off in his pick-up truck.

The man continued to pray and hold on to his vision. As the water began rising in his house, he had to climb up to the roof. A boat came by with some people heading for safe ground. They yelled at the man to grab a rope they were ready to throw and take him to safety. He told them that he was waiting for God to save him. They shook their heads and moved on.

The man continued to pray, believing with all his heart that he would be saved by God. The flood waters continued to rise. A helicopter flew by and a voice came over a loudspeaker offering to lower a ladder and take him off the roof. The man waved the helicopter away, shouting back that he was waiting for God to save him. The helicopter left. The flooding water came over the roof and caught him up and swept him away. He drowned.


When he reached heaven and asked, “God, why did you not save me? I believed in you with all my heart. Why did you let me drown?” God replied, “I sent you a pick-up truck, a boat and a helicopter and you refused all of them. What else could I possibly do for you?”

There are a few versions of this on the web. I found this one here and left a comment here.

What my comment says is that an omniscient god would have known that the man would refuse help from the pick-up truck, the boat, and the helicopter. 

Why would an omniscient god send methods of rescue he knew in advance would be rejected?

The god of this parable would have known what form of rescue the trapped man would require to believe that the rescuer was god or a representative of. But he chooses to not send that form of rescue and to send three rescuers he knows will be rejected. 

This is how I feel when people on twitter tell me they've been sent by their god to convince me their god is real. He must know in advance that they will fail just as he knew the attempted rescuers would fail. 

So if this god is real and is really sending these people why does he choose people he knows, in advance, I won't find convincing? 

I said in my comment to the above story, it seems the god of this story had no intention of saving the trapped man. Likewise, if he is real and sending these people to me as they claim, it seems he has no real intention of having me believe. 

Sending rescuers that will be ignored or people that I won't find convincing is not the way one would expect an omniscient god to act. 

Am I really expected to believe an omniscient being capable of literally anything would behave in such a manner? Would an omniscient god really waste the time of the devout by having them talk to me when he knows they will not convince me of his existence whilst knowing what is required to actually convince me he's real? 

To me the only reason to do it like this is so if I actually do get to heaven and face god he can say "I told you so" which is, of course, a ludicrous proposition. The conclusion, obviously, is that just like the trapped man, the pick-up truck driver, the people in the boat and the pilot of the helicopter, the god behind these claims is fictional.