The thing is how you want to view it.
Option 1:
Neutral view of religion and history.
People tried to explain their existence and what they could observe. The Bible is just a big collection of stories that tried to explain their understanding of the world. Why it is how it is and who made it and why they made it like that. Why they have to suffer and can have fun…
Option 2:
Overall religious.
God is omnipotent but likes to do shit in a weird way for a reason. This is fine because this is important for some reason and not only what the result in the end is important but the way to it too. Gods decision is always the best.
Option 3:
Sarcastic
God is an asshole who just likes to play with the humans from time to time. Nothing he does is needed to make sense. He could in an instant remove all our problems and create a world where there is no need to suffer. However that would be boring. I mean look around most humans are assholes and we are being created in the image of God.
The way you are confident that you have covered all arguments is a little grating on me. From my understanding of philosophy and christianity, there is another option, but your extremely broad strokes in “option 2” i guess encapsulates it because it explains all actions and reasons for actions as “weird” and “important for some reason” when describing both the process and the destination.
Option 4:
Kicking the kids out after they should be legal adults
God had a ton of kids. He didn’t want them to have failure to launch, so he set up them to have “knowledge of good and evil” and imperfect parents then each of god’s kids (now with bodies as humans) have the choice to act as a moral agent. Moral agents can choose to be dicks or altruistic. The best humans get to be “joint heirs with Christ” and inherit all that Christ inherits. The rest… fail to launch and ultimately get a really nice bedroom and computer but that’s about it. The kicked-out kid’s perspective on their parent right after getting kicked out is extremely mixed.
A person with a background in philosophy ought to be able to make a good faith (hehe) argument that God is not benevolent in any capacity and is doing the same as a toddler in a sandbox.
I had a professor make that exact argument… or perhaps he was quoting an argument of one of the greats. Anyway, the argument goes like this:
- if there is evil, and god has the power to stop it, but he doesnt due to his knowledge, then he is not omnicient
- if there is evil, and god has the power to stop it, but he doesnt and he has all knowledge, then he is evil
- if there is evil, and god does not have the power to stop it, then he is impotent
The first person then smugly smiles that they put God into a box and waits to hear the mental gymnastics from the Christian Philosopher.
The christian philosopher then brings up a few points that were straw manned:
- incomplete understanding of whether what we are seeing is “evil”
- the illusion of choice - are we simply clocks that were preprogrammed back when the big bang occured? Can a clock have “evil” within it?
- moral agents with ability to make meaningful choices - The actions of the omnipotent being (God) are tied by pesky rules regarding choice because the being (God) could eliminate choice: the being could choose the perfect stimuli to create an exact copy of an ideal AI in a bio-mechanical body instead of moral agents who choose to be a dick or not. Therefore, if this fact pattern is reality, then there must be “something special” about being a moral agent and having a relationship albeit distant with an Omnipotent being.
The philosophers then keep asking questions to reduce the opponents argument until they conclude with the following question: “What is?” then they leave as friends.
