Hi Gus,

Thanks for your post. I think this is a definitely a common reality within religious discussions, that I, who identify as a Christian, also find to be quite frustrating, and I recognize that I have used this circular reasoning before.

As a Christian, faith is definitely a significant aspect of my religious adherence, and in the Bible, it is often upheld as a virtue. I am not necessarily providing any sort of argument, but rather I would like to provide a better definition of faith, what it is and what it is not and hopefully this will add some value to the conversation.

Take the phrase, "a blind leap of faith". Unfortunately, I think that many Western Christians adhere to this sort of faith when the argument boils down to your mentioned point of frustration, however I do not believe this is what faith actually is, nor do I think that the Bible and Jesus depict it as such. First, I'll offer one example (there are plenty of others), in which we don't see faith as a lack of evidence.

1. Doubting Thomas (John 24:24-29)
I am not sure how familiar you are with the Christian gospels, but one relatively well known story is that of one of Jesus' disciples, Thomas, who got the unfortunate label of "doubting Thomas" because he does not believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, solely on the basis of the other disciples telling him. It is not until he sees the wounds in Jesus' hands, feet, and side that he believes (don't ask me why Jesus wasn't just raised back perfectly healed, I have never really thought this through), and Jesus responds by saying, "blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe". Although some people seem to draw the conclusion that Jesus is saying it is better not have evidence and believe (blind faith), this is not at all within the text. Additionally, it isn't at all the case that Thomas doesn't have evidence before he believes (he does: the testimony of the other disciples), however he receives additional evidence which leads to his belief.

Faith is not the belief based on no evidence, in fact there are plenty examples we come across that we would still say require faith, but there is plenty of evidence. I'll provide a personally applicable one.

I just recently got into rock climbing (quarantine things am I right?), and there is a ton of evidence that it is perfectly safe. The rope I am using is rated to 8 kilo-newtons, the bolts in the rock can hold 6000lbs of force, the carabiner can handle 22KN, and... you get the idea. All the evidence points to the fact that I am perfectly safe, however I think it's still applicable to say, "I have faith that I will be safe" or "I have faith in the equipment".

Hopefully this understanding of faith helps. Additionally, I would just input that I think that there is good evidence for theism and the Christian tradition that I have chosen to be a part of. (To name a few in regards to theism in general: the Fine tuning argument, the necessity of God in our principle of causation, the phenomena of morality. In regard to Christianity, the nature of the message, its survival as unappealing as it would be for the earliest Christians). I also won't deny that there is evidence against Christianity and theism as whole (biggest one for me is the problem of evil), but all in all the evidence seems to lean towards the reality of the Christian God, and that is what I put my faith in. Hope this helps!

either believe that god wants us to "rule of the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground" and conclude that god isn't omnibenevolent — TheMadFool

Sorry for the late response.

From this statement, it seems like you are asserting that the concept of human dominion over creation is somehow incompatible with an omnibenevolent God. And in general, as indicated in your original post, "an omnibenevolent god will not play favorites with his creation". I think your assumed premise can be succinctly summarized as the following

1. If God plays favorites, then God is doing something not good.
2. God plays favorites (God gives human dominion over creation)
c. Therefore God is doing something not good, thus cannot be all good (omnibenevolent)

Hopefully this is a faithful reconstruction of the main premise of your argument.

Premise 1 hinges on the assumption that favoritism is a bad thing, and this is where I disagree. Although I believe that it can be a bad thing, I don't think that it is always a bad thing, and in fact is sometimes a very good thing. You provide the analogy of a parent/children relationship, where a good parent will love all of their children equally, and failure to do so would be bad. We are on the same page in this regard. However, lets say we throw Scout (the family dog) into the mix. If the parent in this situation were to somehow treat Scout and the other children equally, we would definitely have to conclude that this is a bad thing. The badness seems to arise because we place an inherently lower level of worth on Scout (because its a dog), and we place a higher level of worth on the children.

In the same regard, within Christianity and other mainline religions (aside from Eastern religions that emphasize reincarnation - Jainism especially), humanity is the favored creation because God places the highest worth in us. Thus, favoritism towards humanity should be seen as a necessary attribute to an omnibenevolent God rather than incompatible.

I realize this isn't a direct comment to your argument, but I stand by my previous comment and think this is the primary area where your argument breaks down.

New to the forum, but hoping to add some value here.

From my understanding of your post, this is the general layout of your argument.

If God is omnibenevolent, then he does not play favorites with his creation
If he doesn’t play favorites with his creation, then he will not intervene in situations of natural evil.
God is omnibenevolent.
Therefore God does not play favorites with his creation (MP 1,3)
Therefore God does not intervene in situations of natural evil (MP 2,4)

After reading some of the initial comments, I am under the assumption that the God you are referring to is the Christian God. If my assumption is correct, then your first premise (as I have laid out) seems to be the easiest to refute, and thus the rest of the argument breaks down.

Christians do believe that God is omnibenevolent, yet God definitely seems to play favorites with his creation. This can be clearly seen in the creation account, where God says, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Gen. 1:26). God is essentially saying, “Okay, I’m gonna create humans in my own image AND y’all are gonna rule over everything else I’ve created”. Favoritism? I think so.

For argument sake, let's assume that god does not play favorites. Assuming one accepts all of your claims, it still seems like the strongest conclusion you can draw is that “God does not intervene in situations of natural evil”. It still doesn’t explain the issue of why natural evil exists in the first place. From your argument, if god is the creator, then he would have created everything with natural evil as the foundational force, where one creature's benefit is almost always at the cost of another. And a god that initiated this sort of natural evil definitely doesn’t seem to be an omnibenevolent god. Final note, if you hold firmly to your argument, the Jainist deities seem to fit much better with the god you described.