Parasomnium wrote,
"Why does God want us to reach belief in him in the very short period of our existence when it is hardest for us to do so? I mean, our life on earth is infinitely short compared to the eternal afterlife. Why can't God accept people who only come to believe after they have died and then see that everything they've been told in church is true after all? ... I'd like to see some religious opinions."
I really like your question. Here's my view.
On the one hand, belief should not always require seeing for ourselves. Jurors believe the testimony of witnesses, and most of us believe what newspapers say (sometimes). We believe things people tell us all the time - at least we believe them enough to act as if the people are not mistaken. At times, our belief will prove to be falsely placed, but the alternative of assuming everyone cannot be trusted would be paranoid. We have to trust people some time, and we can take a hard look at people to decide when our trust is justified.
On the other hand, belief should not be placed without due justification (at least according to Judaism and Christianity). Otherwise, we would believe in all the gods. So belief has to at least satisfy the requirement of coherency. This leaves us with two questions: Is there a God? and How do I know what God is truly like? (so that my beliefs are not without justification).
I will assume for this reply (without justification) that the character of this world (including the genuine value of our own lives) is best explained by a Creator who is a person. This idea at least seemed to many ancient people a better explanation of the world than polytheism, and it does not depend on whether macro-evolution occurs or not.
If there was a Creator, then it's possible he would communicate to us. And for any comprehensive level of communication he would have to speak in a way we could humanly understand - something like a human language. So what is the reasonable thing to do when someone tells us that they heard an otherwise inexplicable voice identifying itself as God. I suppose we would wonder first if they were mentally ill. But if they instead had the characteristics of being sane, and if they performed acts or predictions which had no plausible natural explanation, then it might be reasonable to believe that God had chosen to speak to them -- even if God had not ever spoken personally to us in that way.
A good biblical example is when Pharaoh will not believe Moses, even when plagues repeatedly happen in response to Pharaoh's refusal to obey God's message given to Moses. The point is that (from the perspective of the narrative) Pharaoh was not believing Moses for lack of evidence, but rather that he was refusing to believe (whether to maintain status, or because of greed) what was the most plausible explanation. The early Christian Gospels similarly suggested that people were not believing Jesus for reasons other than lack of evidence. There were miracles, for example, as evidence. Failure to believe is criticised only as an expression of ill will, or breaking trust. There are many passages in the Bible where doubt or uncertainty are tolerated without criticism.
Of course, it is now disputed whether miracles happened, and whether we have credible representations of what Moses or Jesus said. But I am only trying to show here that this idea that people should believe without any basis is not a moral demand the Bible makes. It makes God seem rather arbitrary, just as modern discussion of divine punishment suggests that God punishes people far beyond what justice could require (e.g., beyond "eye for eye and tooth for tooth"). It's impossible to imagine that an arbitrary God would be willing to forgive us, or able to make us into better people.
™ Version 4.2