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

Imagine the following parallel: the odds of winning at a particular slot machine are 1 trillion to one. You pull the lever ten times in a row and win each time. Now, if you hadn't won, you wouldn't have been in a situation where you could experience the win. But the fact is, despite the incredible odds, you did win, and you won ten times in a row. Wouldn't you think the machine was rigged?

Now, if there were one trillion machines with one trillion people pulling levers, and after ten tries there were ten wins, you wouldn't think it was rigged. In fact, the result is what you would expect, given the odds.

Similarly, imagine the odds of a universe being capable of housing intelligent life is 1/10^120, and we just happen to have a universe that is capable of housing intelligent life. Wouldn't you think our universe was rigged--i.e., designed--, especially when the odds of it coming to be randomly are so much smaller than winning at a slot machine ten times in a row?

Now, you wouldn't think the universe was rigged/designed if there were 10^120 universes, only one of which was capable of housing intelligent life. It's precisely considerations of this kind which drive contemporary atheists to say that there must be a nearly infinite amount of universes, most of them lifeless. (In the interests of fairness, though, there are still some atheists who think that we just got lucky to get a universe that is capable of housing intelligent life.)

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

It's not. It depends on the motivations in doing so. You're still looking at it from the end product and working back to a God, which is the second conditional, not the first. Can you attach any meaning to 'all-loving' that doesn't involve giving?

I'm going to bed. Happy philosophizing, all!

Can you attach any meaning to 'all-loving' that doesn't involve giving?

That's my whole point. I do, and have. I don't see that all-loving has to involve giving, therefore I don't get the beneficence link. Whether or not creation is something worth giving is my second question, and possibly quite irrelevant.

Similarly, imagine the odds of a universe being capable of housing intelligent life is 1/10^120, and we just happen to have a universe that is capable of housing intelligent life. Wouldn't you think our universe was rigged--i.e., designed--, especially when the odds of it coming to be randomly are so much smaller than winning at a slot machine ten times in a row?

No, I'd say that's one possibility. Other possibilities include the existence of some cosmological force we don't yet understand resulted in the universe being like it is, and maybe the fact that this universe supports intelligent life might be coincidental to this cosmological force. Or maybe there's a god-like entity that created the universe the way it is for some other reason besides being compatable with intelligent life - maybe this entity doesn't give a damn about life but likes the pretty stars arranged as they are.

That's my whole point. I do, and have.

When, and how?

I don't see that all-loving has to involve giving, therefore I don't get the beneficence link.

So someone can love without giving love?

When, and how?

I do right now. I'm not sure how to give you the insight into my brain to prove this to you, so you can either take my word for it, or dismiss it outright.

So someone can love without giving love?

Are you equating creating the universe to giving love, or is the universe created so that there's something to give love to?

Are you equating creating the universe to giving love, or is the universe created so that there's something to give love to?

Neither at the moment, I'm asking about your conception of love and if it is congruent with the conception that Swinburne etc mean when they say 'all-loving'.

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

Obviously Judaism does. Or at least the "all-powerful" part. I don't know if YHWH would be considered "all-loving." I defer to people who've actually studied the tenets of Judaism for this one.

Islam does: pretty much every part of the Koran starts with "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful"

If you count Baha'i as a major religion, then it does, as it's an outgrowth of the monotheistic religions.

I don't think any other of the majors do though.

So, how about that local sports team?