I wish I could stay, this is really interesting.

Why create a universe? It's mostly empty space and the places that aren't empty are mostly pretty lousy places for life. Why hellish places like Venus? How about instead of a universe, just creating somebody to be nice and loving to?

Do the other major religions have an all-powerful, all-loving God?

One could, but it'd be irrelevant. The question is whether such a God gives, not whether he's aiming for a set of criteria.

By "one could", I don't mean that it's a logically coherent or psychologically entertainable supposition. I mean instead that there's a long tradition of philosophical theology according to which God doesn't necessarily create a universe.

I don't quite know what, "The question is whether such a God gives, not whether he's aiming for a set of criteria" means. Is there supposed to be a word after "gives", or does it modify "a set of criteria"?

most contemporary philosophers would agree that there is no need to posit a God, and that the existence of evil gives us reason, perhaps decisive reason, to deny that such a being exists

It seems that implicit in this is a definition of god that's pretty Judeo-Christian.

What are the criteria for a God? I was discussing this other places -- I'm not precisely sure what mine are, but creating the universe is certainly a big step in the deity direction. Restoring life isn't -- but I don't know where "magic" and "science" fall away and are replaced by divinity. It's a fuzzy assed line.

How about instead of a universe, just creating somebody to be nice and loving to?

Definitionally, in such a case that somebody would be the universe. But that's again on the question of whether this universe provides evidence of a god, i.e. the second conditional, not the first.

Why create a universe? It's mostly empty space and the places that aren't empty are mostly pretty lousy places for life. Why hellish places like Venus? How about instead of a universe, just creating somebody to be nice and loving to?

Yeah, when our concepts of God came about everyone thought that the Earth was the center of the universe.

OTOH, the stars, galaxies and planets are pretty, so maybe that's why God created them. And if God just created the Big Bang, then at least one galaxy would be required for the Earth to be created and life to evolve (as most of the Earth's atoms were created in other stars).

Still, the kinds of reasons some contemporary philosophers give for believing in God are things like: the universe seems to be 'fine-tuned' to allow for the emergence of intelligent life, therefore it makes sense to believe there's a fine-tuner.

That always stikes me as a bit circular. If there are other Universes with different physical properties that end up with the emergence of intelligent life as we don't know it, then they could say the exact same thing about their Universe.

I don't quite know what, "The question is whether such a God gives, not whether he's aiming for a set of criteria" means. Is there supposed to be a word after "gives", or does it modify "a set of criteria"?

No, it's that 'all-loving' is here being treated as a property of God, and that loving without the desire to give is too sparse a concept to sustain the term. (As a single example, does it make sense to say "X loves" without saying "X gives love"?) I did once read a sci-fi story where Earth, facing destruction for some reason, is coincidentally visited by a Lovebeast, who wants to love everyone. The Earth is right on board with the concept, but the poor bewildered Lovebeast doesn't know what to do with all the cries of "Save us! Save us!" Not being omnipotent, of course.

That always stikes me as a bit circular. If there are other Universes with different physical properties that end up with the emergence of intelligent life as we don't know it, then they could say the exact same thing about their Universe.

Yeah, and if there are other universes where intelligent life is impossible, there would be no intelligent creatures to notice this.

This is a common argument, called the anthropic principle.

Then why keep living?

Inertia, and not wanting to upset my mother. In case you think I'm kidding or being arch to provoke you -- consider my suicide attempt at age 9. I was curious about death, and wanted to try it out. After a bunch of pills I realised that I was going to die eventually anyway, so no need to rush, and it'd be kindest to my mother if I did it after she did. Plus, there was a whole other bunch of stuff I was curious about, and it was possible that I wouldn't get a shot at it after dying.

Stomach hurt like a bitch though.

As I said, empiricism is entirely the wrong way to go about such a problem. It hardly matters what evidence you see either way on the matter; if it's not a position you can live, rather than simply propose to score points, why should I take it seriously?

You've lost me here.

I again repeat -- what is inherently beneficent about creating the universe? You state it, but I don't understand why?