Arguing the ontology of god with a theist will almost always get them making the case for god's existence being necessary. That is to say, they will argue that god
must exist, because it is logically impossible for god
not to exist. To do this, usually some version of the ontological argument must be made. I don't want to address the OA here because that's not my goal. Rather, I want to instead address something I stumbled upon through debating theists over what I think is one of the toughest questions you can throw at any theist. It is a question I asked in a recent post I made,
why I'm an atheist.
In the post I made the argument that the god of classical theism is not logically possible and to demonstrate that I asked, "How does a timeless god who knows everything freely chose to create our world and not some other world?" It could also be asked referring to the universe, "How does a timeless god who knows everything freely chose to create our universe and not some other universe?" Go ahead and ask any theist (or deist) this question and then pay close attention to their answer.
First, notice that the question is a "how" question and not a "why" question. One Christian who responded to this question said, “Uh….how would I know why God chose our universe vs another universe?” This response totally misses the point, for the question is merely concerned about
how it could be possible for a timeless god to create one particular universe over another, and not
why (although once the how question is attempted the why question becomes more relevant as we'll see).
Second, there are at least two major interpretations that philosophers of religion have on god's relationship to time. One is that god is intrinsically timeless with or with out an act of creation, the other is that god is timeless prior the creation of the universe, and temporal subsequently. Neither of these views of god's relationship to time make any difference here because the question is concerned with god's choice
prior to creation of our universe. There are some who believe god is fully temporal, or at least omni-temporal (existing at all moments in time), and that god exists in some sort of metaphysical time prior to physical time, but
I've argued that the idea of metaphysical time amounts to nothing more than philosophical wordplay, whereby the theist unjustifiably claims god has time without having time.
This question occurred to me when I was thinking about Einstein's hypothetical question, "Did God have a choice in creating the universe?" I even wrote a blog about it
here. The answer I've come up with is "No." God could not have a choice in creating the universe because choices require time and states of indecision. If god is omniscient and knows everything, then he
knew that he would create
our universe, and not any other universe, and he knew he would create
a universe and not refrain from creation. For god to have had a choice in creating the universe, he would have had to exist in some moment or in some mental state where he was unsure of whether or not he would create a universe. For this to be possible god would have to exist in time and there would have to be something god couldn't know, namely, whether or not he'd create a universe. Such a god could not be timeless and omniscient, as the god of classical theism is described to be. And thus, the god of classical theism is not logically coherent.