Well, I'll start off with the glib comment that, since I'm older than you are, the implication of your last paragraph (that I'll grow out of it) probably doesn't hold up. Metaphilosophically speaking, no one ever searches for the truth "no holds barred". The search for truth is more like Neurath's boat, where we use some things we believe a little more firmly than other things to sort out our beliefs. The more philosophical people continue doing this for their lives; but it's never the building of an entirely new boat.
Re: Ezekiel. Yes, we think he saw God because it's in scripture, which, at our most liberal moments, we believe to be generally reliable, and at our more conservative, to be very, very reliable. Outside of that? Well, as far as I know, there's no reason outside of scripture to believe Ezekiel even existed, so, well, no.
Yes, I misspoke myself. God did
not need to create.
Where does the standard of justice come from? Well, it comes from God, not anything outside of God. Your contention, that it requires some agent outside of God, is certainly mistaken. At most (and I'll dispute this as well), it requires some code, some abstract object outside of God. But it seems to me it only requires that God have nature; that is, that God is in a certain sort of way. Just as humans don't act against their nature (we don't seek evil for its own sake, for example), neither does God. Could he? I don't know. But he doesn't. Maybe the best analogy would be that of a really good person, to whom it simply does not occur to do anything that would be wrong.
I've argued (in what might be my best paper ever) that, if you want to hold that God created abstract objects, you have to hold the Aristotelian position; that is, that abstract objects don't exist outside of the objects that instantiate them. To pick an easy example, that means that, in order to create the color 'red', God simply had to create a red thing.
Re: Omnibenevolence: But God did not create any evil thing. There are two things God created that might be considered evil things: humans and natural disasters (and maybe or maybe not other alien races. But we don't know if there are any, and so that's a bit beside the argument.) But humans are evil by their own choices, and natural disasters aren't evil in themselves, but only in the effects they have. It's not logically necessary that natural disasters inflict harm. Ergo, God did not create anything that is essentially evil.
Re: Hitler example. My only point is that we don't know. It's
possible God had to allow Hitler to prevent a worse evil. That's all I'm claiming. I've posted enough regarding free will in this forum and even this thread that I'll only go into more detail if you really want me too.
Re: God does not exist. Yes, you are right. But, since the argument is generally advanced by atheists against theists, it's not unreasonable to assume that the 'proper' conclusion of the argument is that there is no God.
On True = Good = Beautiful. I wish I had a proof, I really do. I think that, at best, I can show evidence for the Good being the Beautiful by simply pointing at the astonishing range of philosophers who have thought this, or something like it. (In brief, it includes Plato, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, and Foucault. It's not an entirely unreasonable premise that anything these five agreed on must be true!
) But, of course, this isn't a proof, and I don't really have one.
Re: God convincing you. The question is not whether or not God could convince you. Of course he could. And, if you buy the whole Christian story, eventually he will convince you. The question is two-fold: whether or not he can convince you, and whether or not he's obligated to do more towards this than he's done.
Finally, re: Trusting God (and several other related issues). I'm not posting here to convince you, or anyone else, of the truth of Christianity. Of course, if you were convinced, I'd be elated. But that's not my main point posting in this thread (and often even less the point in other threads.) The main point is to show that Christianity is reasonable to believe; that, given the assumptions and tenets of the Christian faith, it is not unreasonable to believe in its truth. That's why comments about trusting God are apropos. I'd be foolish to think that you'd be convinced by an exhortation to trust God. But I'm hoping that you can see how it makes sense to someone inside the tradition. Our relationship with God is seen, in part, on analogy with friendship. And just like we sometimes need to just trust our friends, we sometimes need to trust God.