Photocrat

Both us and for God. It is good both to love & be loved.

In the same way we can consider having children a 'good' thing; we wish to love them and share with them the joys of being.

Part of what Heaven is is who is there, not merely the locale. There's a story which goes a bit like this:

A man once asked to see both heaven & hell before he died and his wish was granted. To his surprise, they were both identical. In each place, there were people set several feet from a table filled with the best food imaginable and they had to eat with long chop sticks. However, in hell, everyone was miserable and hungry, while in heaven they were all happy and well fed. In hell, each person kept frantically trying to feed themselves, to no avail--the chop sticks were simply too long. In heaven, each person fed his neighbor and everyone was happy.

Do you understand what I mean by that? I know it's not perfect--I'm sure that even the nastiest people could figure out a simple tit-for-tat arrangement, but it's only an illustration and that's beside the point.

AKA begging the question; yes, I've seen such formulations. However, that only happens if you're not very careful with your premises :] I hope that I'm a tad more careful than that...

Just a few other tidbits I might add --

I don't think that there is such a thing as a "best possible world." Aside from that being subjective (e.g. not everyone would agree on what is "best", making it logically impossible to make -- please note my definition of "omnipotent" as "able to do any logically possible thing") it seems as though any world bereft of challenges would keep us from personal growth and that challenge is only meaningful with the possibility of failure.

Now then, how about the Arguement from Good? That is, the fact that most people value their lives and are glad to exist indicates that, if there is a god, that god is most likely more good than evil. While it may be that there's no such thing as a "worst possible world" either; the preponderance of the evidence seems to indicate that people are glad to live, hence if there is a god, they would tend to be more good than evil. That is, an evil god would be expected to create a world (if they made any) in which people were more likely to hate their lives than to enjoy them.

Photocrat

You're talking to someone who had an 'ant farm' way back when :] But I digress...

Think of the intellectual gulf between you and a 5-year-old. Is a relationship with them possible or meaningful? Think of the intellectual gulf between you and a dog, or another pet. Do people not find having pets meaningful & care for them?

Now, why can we have a relationship with a dog more than with an ant? Is it not because they are more like us--that they express emotions (e.g. are glad to see you, etc.)? Can we not also relate even better to one who is concious--another human, however young?

Since God is concious & we are concious, it makes possible a meaningful relationship, even if we are much less in power. After all, we are understood to be 'in the image of God' so it stands to reason that we are similar enough to be meaningful to God and to be loved by Him :]

In other words, while I agree that our ability to relate to other creatures diminishes the less they are like us; I think that God made sure that we are enough like Him that loving us is meaningful to both of us.