I dont necessarily believe he has to be benevolent to exist.
My view is that the first matter that came up + all the laws of nature had to have a source. The soutce behind the creation of these things have to be supernatural since it controls the laws of the universe. Even if its not a single being i dont eliminate the idea that the universe in general could be god. This is the problem with the atheist quote
"If a god can come out of nowhere, so can the universe. Therefore we don't need a god."
But then wouldnt that mean the universe is god? Im still not entirely sure about gods existence, but i lean more towards theism.
Now with the hell question, the chance of it existing is higher than 0. Im too pessimistic to be comfortable with that.
For me the chances are 0. Simply because if you look at the world you can see clearly that it is not designed to facilitate human happiness, there is far too much non-human caused suffering present in the world, from natural disasters to degenerative diseases, viruses and countless excruciating ways to die slowly at the hands of the natural world, doesn’t matter if you’re a grown man, a pregnant woman or a newborn child. A God who allows this and yet commands his creations to behave in a way that contradicts it (I.e. cleaning up the crap the natural world has left us with) is a morally inconsistent god, and whether or not you believe he exists, you must recognise that this level of hippocracy at the very least renders him unworthy of our worship, much less our adulation and praise. All religious scripture teach that god is morally infallible in all things, but here we can see that just isn’t so.
Envision it this way, if I were to develop a computer program that could virtually simulate a universe in such extensive detail that the sentient beings that evolved within this universe were actually conscious enough to feel pain, would I not be morally responsible for their suffering? I would be their god, their creator. If I then demanded they
worship me despite doing nothing to relieve them of their existential threats and uncalulable suffering throughout the generations this would render me downright immoral by any objective measure of morality.
This is what I will never understand about the religious assertion that atheists are ‘moral relativists’ who are incapable of believing in objective moral axioms. In light of the metaphor I just presented, so are they. They have a different moral standard for their creator than they would an everyday man, and thus believe in a ‘relative morality’ far more than any atheist. A god that sends a man to hell for wanting to end his own life is a tyrant in light of the morally horrendous crimes against life that he has visited upon us, or hasn’t cared to prevent.
Furthermore, there are more convincing theories to explain the calibration of physical law than ‘it was made by an all powerful being’, multiverse theory being one of them. If you believe ‘in that case the universe is god’ then I suppose there is little response I can give to that. What I can say for fact is that the idea that this all powerful force behind the creation of the life has a vested interest in the activity of humans is absolutely absurd, for the reasons I stated earlier. For your belief that “he doesn’t have to be benevolent to exist” I would say; Why create a species that are liable to your judgement and punishment for not upholding
your moral code if the very code you have prescribed them is contradicted by the very world you have given them to live in? A god who values these moral principles
so highly that he is willing to punish his creations for all eternity for not upholding them, would surely not be so evil and careless as to have broken all of his own moral principles within the very design of the inhospitable and pain-filled world he has given them to live in. If he cares so much about morality, then why doesn’t he ascribe to it himself? Simple answer; he doesn’t care about it, or he doesn’t exist, either way, you’re safe from hell.
