God is All-Loving

    By all-loving, I mean that God loves more deeply and more truly than any other being in the universe(s).  God loves, because there is love in the universe, and God's love is without equal in the universe(s), because God is greater than God's creation.  Note that it is more correct to say that God is love, rather than God has love because God having love would imply that love exists independently of God, which it does not.

    We should ask the question, "What exactly does God love?"  Let us imagine the time when only God existed.  This means that the only thing for God to love would be God's own self, since otherwise God would love nothing, and would not love.  Is it possible that God also hates God?  No.  If this were the case, God would be at war with God until the greater aspect of God won.  (In the case of a tie, see below.)  If the God of hate won, God would cease to exist.  We know that this did not happen, because God created the universe.  What then, does God hate?  At this point, the only thing for God to hate is the nothingness that is not God.  It is possible to hate nothingness in a way that it is not possible to love nothingness.

    Now move forward to when God created the universe.  There is no matter, energy, space, or time available, so God must create all these things.  God created the universe from God's own self, in an act of will and love.    Because God created the universe from God, and God loves God, God must love the universe, and everything in it (including us).  However, keep in mind that the universe is made by God.  It is not God.  God is the fundamental cause, while the universe is the effect.  

    God is perfect in the absolute sense of the term.  It is not possible to make God better (who could do this?), nor is is possible to create a being that is better than God (again, who could do this?).  In this sense (the ontological sense) God is good.  To be ontologically good means to be "true to your nature," or to be the best that you can be.  God is the best God that can be, so the term is appropriate.

    God also has absolute moral goodness.  To have moral goodness means to want what is best and to act for what is best.  God must be more good than the moral good that exists in the universe(s). 

    At this point, only theism gives satisfactory philosophical understanding of God.  Deism has been eliminated because it denies, implicitly or explicitly, an all-loving God.  The theistic religions are Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  The primary theological disagreement between Christianity and the other two is the The Trinity, which we turn to next.

Objection 1:

    You are basing your knowledge of God's loves and hates on our loves and hates.  Are not our loves and hates just a product of evolution?  Does not our concept of good and evil come from evolution as well?

Reply:

    Perhaps evolution had a hand in determining what we see what we see as good, and what we love.  After all, ants typically exhibit quite "moral" behavior.  However, this does not change that God is the first cause.  If evolution is true, then God caused it, which causes us to understand good, evil, love and hate.  God is the real cause, not evolution.

Objection 2:

    For that matter, none of these things really exist.  Given inputs (environment) our program (genetics) determines what we will do (outputs).  We have no choices in the matter.  Ascribing morality to a non-free agent is an exercise in futility. 

Reply:

    We have free will.  See here, which is part of Understanding Humans, Using Philosophy.

Objection 3:

   Okay God has loves, but does he hate?  Isn't hate a bad thing?

Reply:

   If a being loves, then it immediately follows that a being hates.  To love something is to hate that which destroys that something.  Also, note that the opposite of agape (self-giving love) is not hate, but using others or stealing joy from others.  The opposite of giving is taking.

Objection 4:

    Is it possible that God contains a perfect destructive (evil) aspect as well as a perfect creative (good) aspect?  If this was the case neither the creative nor the destructive aspect would win the conflict.

Reply:

    This is called dualism.  Let us assume that there is an aspect of God that loves destruction, and an aspect of God that loves creation.  A being that perfectly loves destruction will destroy everything, including itself.  A being that perfectly loves creation will not destroy itself, because that would destroy its ability to create.  That is, the creative aspect must be greater than (not equal with) the destructive aspect, because the creative aspect is pure, and it is not possible to have a pure destructive aspect.