If God is good and God is loving what is the evidence? This is all about evidence. I don’t want to see any scriptures because they are not evidence.
Look around you in this world. What evidence do you see that would indicate that a good/loving God exists? I am trying to be objective about this rather than being influenced by my own feelings and life experiences which do not constitute evidence.[/
God is unprovable as you have recognized. Any deity is equally disprovable. Thus your request for evidence is not perhaps the right one since evidence functions as support for reasons and is part of a process of proof. Arguing that because God is disprovable must mean he exists also contains problems because it’s an argument from the negative. Asking for objectivity is also problematic being that any unprovable supreme deity is a function of belief, belief being entirely a subjective realm. That does not mean there is no fruitful or at least engaging discourse to he had on these questions, only that discourse must be one of philosophy, not of evidence. Obviously a number of bright minds have dealt with these questions.
To people who don’t believe in a deity in any form, well I get it. There are many problems with many religious texts and portrayals of deities, most especially the idea that such a supreme being would be good or loving as least by any kind of definition humans can understand. Those definitions are often fairly subjective too. Though moral relativism itself can be dangerous since that would make any view of what is good or evil equally valid and there appears to be some consensus for instance that suffering, particularly of those viewed as innocents or lacking power is often defined as evil, I think that part of seeking outside moral relativism for a universal morality leads to the idea of a ‘good god.’ If there is a supreme being, it seems like such a being would need to be omnipotent at least and likely omniscient as well. But would he be subject to the universal morality or the inventor of it. If he’s the inventor of it and we can all just intuit it, well then a material universe that looks like this one according to human consensus on morality would make that sort of being a pretty damn big hypocrite and arbitrary. If the deity were subject to that universal morality, well then this world would be unlikely to exist based on the fact that it appears to so frequently violate the consensus on what is good or not.
Another aspect is that when evil is defined as absence of good instead of its own function and most often such a deity is viewed as a creator, especially when posited as a necessary being as someone else has pointed out, then God, being the essential essence of Being from which creation emerges, the first cause as it were, the I AM of Hebrew tradition, cannot reflect an absence since he is all presence and always present, at least according to Boethius. Providence and free will then become the escape doors for most theologians. Or the idea that God’s good is not one humans can understand provides another escape door. A popular theme promoted in Job.
This ignores the elephant in the room too concerning any such being’s relationship with universal morality. IF there is a God and as a supreme being that God has played a central role in material creation either as an intelligence or as an emanation of being, which could certainly be accomplished through such laws of physics or evolution as we understand them (heck the Big Bang was postulated by a Catholic), then such a creation would reflect that Being. If that creation contains evil, then the Being contains evil too. Many religions point to the idea that people or creation is made in imitation of this Being or Divine or energy etc. If that’s so, such a being would then contain within itself the goodness and the evil of material existence. The universal morality and supreme being are each other. If it’s a necessary being it would have to contain both. And most people likely don’t want to believe in such a being. It’s not comfortable. And it’s easier to ignore or dismiss if it’s unprovable anyway. Yet if one wants to consider the existence of such a deity, we might then simply consider ourselves as a potential reflection of it. And whether we are comfortable with it or not, we are capable of good and evil. We may work fairly hard at being what we define as good but we all have a shadow. Let us get hungry or tired or stressed and all of us act in ways that are bad or even evil. Give us a motive for resources or power and we will do so again. The people who are often the mostly likely to act Christian in my experience are the ones who recognize they would have been in the crowd yelling Crucify him and hurling stones. We can’t generally work with our better natures unless we admit the darker nature exists. And you can’t negate it. If we can admit that to ourselves, we can likely acknowledge that if a creator God exists of which creation is a reflection, that God has a shadow side as well. Is there perhaps built into such a God or creation itself an impulse to improvement though. Does evolution reflect a process aimed at improving that is both good and evil and humanity itself strives towards this as well and does so through both good and evil means? Would this explain to some degree, if there is such a being, our desires to give in to our better natures more often? Again, these are more engaging philosophical questions. They are not evidence or proof. There is likely a better word than improvement as well. Another question is if such a creator deity exists which material creation reflects, both good and evil, would such a deity be more like the watchmaker of deism who creates and then steps back and watches it tick or an interventionist or personal deity interacting with said creation? Do we have less trouble with the watchmaker as more inert or with the interventionist deity then?
The other problem of course is living forever.
