Well then, without whining, let me try to briefly touch on some of the differences between triple-o and God.
Thanks for the clarifications. Ultimately, though, I still fail to see how some (suitably modified) version of the POE does not still apply to the Christian God (so understood) – certainly Aquinas, et al., thought it did.
God prepared hell. Not because God is 'decent' or 'nice' but because he hates evil (as a result of his goodness). God is more MERCIFUL than a 'moraly decent' god to the repentant and more JUST to the damned. Anyway whoever Jesus is, he's not the triple-o who 'refuses to let deer burn in a forest fire.' Jesus preaches hell.
If the suffering in hell is
justified (i.e. punishment for 'moral evil'), then the POE argument is just fine.
(But, wholly
independent of the POE argument, the very concept of hell is morally repugnant. It seems absurd that a ‘good’ God would condemn people to an
eternity of torture for simply not believing in him (often for sincerely held reasons). Such a God is a horrific, odious, and strangely vain tyrant [in comparison to hell, God’s commands to commit genocide against the Amalekites, etc., seem like rather small stuff]. But this is a whole separate debate …)
This is a minor issue with respect to predestination. God has perfect foreknowledge and we have free will. The conceptions of god you've discussed have either one or the other but not both.
Not at all! The question of ‘free will’ and God’s foreknowledge have
nothing to do with the POE. The POE argument (as I explained earlier a few times) can, and typically does, make a distinction between ‘moral evil’ (evil caused by free will) and ‘natural evil’ (suffering unrelated to free will).
Of course it is a
separate philosophical question how God’s foreknowledge and (libertarian) free will are
compatible – a question for which I have yet to encounter a satisfying theistic answer. But that’s an entirely separate debate.
With respect to inperfection: God is more perfect than triple-o which is why the equilvalency fails. God is more powerful (sining is weakness, bringing good out of evil is power). God is more good (he is Just and Merciful). God is more knowledgeable (he has perfect forknowledge of beings with free will.)
Again, everything you say here does not seem to be a problem for the POE argument (or at least a suitably modified version of the argument).
By 'blind spot' I meant that you seem oblivious. …. since you believe that you are 'oblivious' to Catholic Faith and to objections raised up thread.
This still doesn’t make any sense to me. I believe that I’m oblivious?
From what I've gathered of your personal story, you were at one time devout, later you rejected your religious upbringing experienced genuine 'grief' even though you 'knew' your decision was more rational. Whatever you call it (delusion, revelation) that mechanism is what I'm refering to and it seems to me that you have experienced it first hand. It's not that you can't detect it, it's that you've decided to ignore it.
The ‘mechanism’ in question is rather straightforward: it’s a natural
psychological reaction to abandoning a set of commitments that were once very important to me.
Just as I was depressed when I was seven years old and found out that Santa Claus didn’t exist (and the Easter Bunny, etc.), so too I was depressed when I finally concluded that God (or at least the Christian God) did not exist. Of course, since my Christian commitments were a lot more important to me when I was 18 than my ‘Santa Claus’ commitments were to me when I was 7, breaking from Christianity was a much greater psychological event. But that is a difference in
degree, not
kind.
There’s nothing more to it! To try to impose a sense of the ‘supernatural’ onto perfectly natural psychological processes is wholly unnecessary (and, in my opinion, foolish).
Moreover, since people who ‘break’ from
other religions (e.g. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.)
also experience this kind of psychological reaction, but those religions are
false (at least if one thinks Catholicism is true), then it can’t be the case that the phenomena in question reflects some uniform ‘supernatural’ experience.
Revelation is true and good things come from it. Wishful thinking is only right by accident so it craps out after a while. In practice, we wait and see how revelations hold up over time.
Well, given that people who belong to different religions seem to have radically different (indeed, incompatible) ‘revelations’ – indeed, people who belong to the
same religion often have conflicting ‘revelations’ – you’ll forgive me if I’m sceptical about the ability of persons to objectively judge “how revelations hold up over time”. I suspect that these ‘revelations’ are somehow insulated psychologically from possibly being falsified by actual experiences.
(I don't understand the distinction: isn't deciding what shall we believe an example of deciding what shall we do?)
When we form beliefs about the nature of the universe (e.g. ‘does phlogiston exist?’, etc.) we should rely on evidence and rational arguments alone. However, when in
particular situations and trying to decide ‘what to do’, often we
need to rely on our emotions, as they can convey information to us (e.g. that certain risks or dangers exist) that are not immediately apparent to our deliberative faculties.
Anyway it seems that you're excluding evidence against your case while including handy emotions like "suffering" and supernatural experiences like "haven't had any so far."
I’m not sure what you mean by this. My position is that, with respect to any particular phenomena, if we have one explanation that relies only on naturalistic processes and entities, and another explanation that relies on
both naturalistic and supernaturalistic processes and entities, then we
should opt for the former. This is especially correct given that there is no ‘evidence’ for the supernatural.