An Evil Deity

   I put this question out to the blogosphere about God, Yahweh, Allah [insert deity here] etc. (I will refer to all of the above as 'God'). The question is how do you know God is good? Now to qualify this I'm going to put out a few caveats.

First off, I care little for the semantic "God is defined as good". So, in order to eradicate this pointlessness, I am going to define good in the colloqial sense e.g. not killing is good. In another sense the question could be couched in terms of suffering, how do you know God wants to 'save' us and is not merely revelling in our suffering?

With that out of the way, I will address the next point. Many theists will be reaching for their holy book at this stage and pointing to where it says God is merciful, God is good etc. so I'm going to ask would an evil God not write that he was good? Would an evil God not get his kicks from convincing his hapless creations that he was their route to being 'saved'? Would he not relish in creating a false hope in order to crush it later? Would it not please such a being to see people worship the very cause of their misfortune?

 Now, the next objection is generally "why would an evil God even create a universe?". Well, to torture the inhabitants obviously. Indeed, why would any God (whether good or evil) create a universe?

Finally, the theist will say "what about all the good in the world?" Well, as we know, God works in mysterious ways and any seeming kindness is merely part of God's greater (evil) plan.

So, this is the question I put to theists. Many atheists are probably eager to point out the incredible number of atrocities in the Bible (or Qu'ran etc.) but I must ask them to hold. Instead I want to ask the theists how (even if the Bible was squeeky clean) do they know that God is good rather than evil. 'Personal revelation' won't cut it either.