For what it's worth, theists don't HAVE to believe that it makes sense for God to exist sans time. They SHOULD believe that, but it isn't mandatory. Swinburne denies that God ever exists outside of time, as (I think) does Ryan Mullins; they think that before creating the universe (assuming the universe began) God existed in non-metric time. [EDIT: I just noticed that Amos already said this.]
It also seems dubious to say that God has a single property called "perfection." I think theism is better stated as the claim that there exists an x such that for all perfections P, P(x). I've seen Alex Pruss and (I think) Dustin Crummett put it this way, and that seems right to me. It also doesn't commit you to a single property called "perfection." God would still be simple insofar as maximal degrees of perfection are simpler than limited degrees, and he's also coherent (in Draper's sense) since he's uniformly perfect. And of course, he has few or no arbitrary limits. So on any of the three major views of theism's prior (Swinburne's, Drapers, and Poston's), theism will get a decent prior.
That deals with 5, 6, and 7 (assuming what I've said is at all plausible).
“I merely claim that it’s not especially obvious that existing absent time is coherent, which is a requirement for theism to be true.”
Timelessness sans creation isn’t required by theism. Swinburne, for instance, thinks God existed in non-metric time prior to creating metric time, and that he never existed timelessly. Ryan Mullins also thinks God is always in time (on his model, time is a divine attribute). There are a whole bunch of temporalist options.
What baffles me about some of these and other arguments you’ve been deliberating is the assumption that God is bound by the laws of logic. Like the timelessness quandary, God existing outside of time may be incoherent, but why should that be surprising? I think most religions hold that God created the laws if logic, so this just seems like an irrelevant constraint being added here.
About (4), you could say that since God is a necessary being, that grounds Him being the same person(s) across all possible worlds. Since God in this world is necessary, the same person(s) that we call God is God in every world. And since perfection entails that there's only one God, we would say that only the God of this world could ever be God and is necessarily God.
Another thing to point out is if one rejects the actual infinite, then one might have to accept the arguments from Craig pointing to a finite past, possibly making theism more probable. So, it might actually turn out to support theism. I'm an infinitist, however (but I do support causal finitism), because I believe in an infinite future and am an eternalist. I would also note that your worries about actual infinities are already solved by theism, so they don't actually count against theism.
As I mentioned to one person who was questioning the Trinity because he found it weird, "Weird is irrelevant. Is it true?" It's good to want things to make sense, but overreliance on that sense of fitness itself makes as little sense as waiting for all the lights to turn green before you leave the house.
I have found a theory that (for me at least) makes sense of most of the problems, and look for ways to refine it to fit what still remains. I won't go into it here, but I will address some of what I think of what you posted.
1. "Disembodied mind" simply means "a mind not attached to a body". If we accept the idea of minds (as opposed to brains), then all minds are inherently disembodied and only become attached when expressing their will through a body.
2. Greatest Possible Being theory would simply mean that for any quality with a maximum, that being holds the maximum value, and for any quality without a maximum, no other being can possibly achieve a greater value. I don't look at these arguments in terms of identifying such a being; instead I look at the implication that the argument makes: if such a being is possible, then it exists in all possible worlds. Modal logic tells us that if something exists, then it is possible; the argument turns that into a biconditional for the Greatest Possible Being.
3. As for the trinity (funny that you should put this at #3), it makes sense that you would not understand it from your current position. For now, it's probably best to consider it the answer to a problem of Biblical interpretation and only deal with it once you get to the point where that becomes relevant to you.
4. You expressed two (potentially) different concepts here and seemed to equate them: Are you wondering if God is a soul, or if God has a soul?
5. The idea of a biconditional test for the Greatest Possible Being has already been discussed.
6. The idea of "outside of time" doesn't bother me in the slightest. My experience here in role playing games makes this trivial to me. This enables me to "look behind the screen" and operate in any point i the game's timeline, so as far as the game is concerned, "timeless". A similar argument can be applied to "omnipotent" and "omniscient" as well.
7. I don't see perfection as anything more than what one teacher set up as the rule for the first day of class: "Do the right thing at the right place at the right time." As long as there is a right thing for the place and time, perfection is possible.
8. I don't see the need for an actual infinity for there to be God. What you seem to be arguing is that if God does not create an infinite number of people, the ability to express all good is impossible. But the fact we have sampling techniques that represent the whole through carefully curated study of a population segment.
What do you think about abstract objects? Don't they exist outside space and time? If they do, maybe it can help with the idea that God exists outside space and time? With platonism, we can have actual infinites and moral realism.
Do you think limits need more explanation than the limitless? For instance, you might imagine that both the universe's past and future are limitless and that space can be infinitely divided. But if I told you that the universe is not past eternal and that there is a minimum length of space (maybe the Planck Length, which is about 1.6 x10^-35 meters), suddenly you and others are probably in want of explanations.
If that is the case, would a being without limits need less explanation than a being with limits? Because if a being did have limits, we could always ask why that being have these particular limits as opposed to some other limits.
Could a theist hold that God being “perfectly good” just means God perfectly coincides with his commands? (It would of course be arbitrary, and perhaps that is enough to sink this view).
What are your thoughts on pascal wager arguments? I’ve been considering them a little. After thinking about it and listening to some smart people on the subject (MR) it now strikes me quite strongly that God wouldn’t put us in a situation where we’d have to make all of these wagers, comparing all the different religions to find out which seems most plausible to bet infinity on. It seems a commitment to being morally good and virtuous (amongst other things) would be what God would be mainly concerned with.
For what it's worth, theists don't HAVE to believe that it makes sense for God to exist sans time. They SHOULD believe that, but it isn't mandatory. Swinburne denies that God ever exists outside of time, as (I think) does Ryan Mullins; they think that before creating the universe (assuming the universe began) God existed in non-metric time. [EDIT: I just noticed that Amos already said this.]
Theism is also arguably compatible with moral anti-realism (though anti-realism is obviously false): https://philpapers.org/rec/LAMITC-3
It also seems dubious to say that God has a single property called "perfection." I think theism is better stated as the claim that there exists an x such that for all perfections P, P(x). I've seen Alex Pruss and (I think) Dustin Crummett put it this way, and that seems right to me. It also doesn't commit you to a single property called "perfection." God would still be simple insofar as maximal degrees of perfection are simpler than limited degrees, and he's also coherent (in Draper's sense) since he's uniformly perfect. And of course, he has few or no arbitrary limits. So on any of the three major views of theism's prior (Swinburne's, Drapers, and Poston's), theism will get a decent prior.
That deals with 5, 6, and 7 (assuming what I've said is at all plausible).
Ryan Mullins punching air over half of these just being problems for Classical Theism
“I merely claim that it’s not especially obvious that existing absent time is coherent, which is a requirement for theism to be true.”
Timelessness sans creation isn’t required by theism. Swinburne, for instance, thinks God existed in non-metric time prior to creating metric time, and that he never existed timelessly. Ryan Mullins also thinks God is always in time (on his model, time is a divine attribute). There are a whole bunch of temporalist options.
What baffles me about some of these and other arguments you’ve been deliberating is the assumption that God is bound by the laws of logic. Like the timelessness quandary, God existing outside of time may be incoherent, but why should that be surprising? I think most religions hold that God created the laws if logic, so this just seems like an irrelevant constraint being added here.
About (4), you could say that since God is a necessary being, that grounds Him being the same person(s) across all possible worlds. Since God in this world is necessary, the same person(s) that we call God is God in every world. And since perfection entails that there's only one God, we would say that only the God of this world could ever be God and is necessarily God.
Another thing to point out is if one rejects the actual infinite, then one might have to accept the arguments from Craig pointing to a finite past, possibly making theism more probable. So, it might actually turn out to support theism. I'm an infinitist, however (but I do support causal finitism), because I believe in an infinite future and am an eternalist. I would also note that your worries about actual infinities are already solved by theism, so they don't actually count against theism.
As I mentioned to one person who was questioning the Trinity because he found it weird, "Weird is irrelevant. Is it true?" It's good to want things to make sense, but overreliance on that sense of fitness itself makes as little sense as waiting for all the lights to turn green before you leave the house.
I have found a theory that (for me at least) makes sense of most of the problems, and look for ways to refine it to fit what still remains. I won't go into it here, but I will address some of what I think of what you posted.
1. "Disembodied mind" simply means "a mind not attached to a body". If we accept the idea of minds (as opposed to brains), then all minds are inherently disembodied and only become attached when expressing their will through a body.
2. Greatest Possible Being theory would simply mean that for any quality with a maximum, that being holds the maximum value, and for any quality without a maximum, no other being can possibly achieve a greater value. I don't look at these arguments in terms of identifying such a being; instead I look at the implication that the argument makes: if such a being is possible, then it exists in all possible worlds. Modal logic tells us that if something exists, then it is possible; the argument turns that into a biconditional for the Greatest Possible Being.
3. As for the trinity (funny that you should put this at #3), it makes sense that you would not understand it from your current position. For now, it's probably best to consider it the answer to a problem of Biblical interpretation and only deal with it once you get to the point where that becomes relevant to you.
4. You expressed two (potentially) different concepts here and seemed to equate them: Are you wondering if God is a soul, or if God has a soul?
5. The idea of a biconditional test for the Greatest Possible Being has already been discussed.
6. The idea of "outside of time" doesn't bother me in the slightest. My experience here in role playing games makes this trivial to me. This enables me to "look behind the screen" and operate in any point i the game's timeline, so as far as the game is concerned, "timeless". A similar argument can be applied to "omnipotent" and "omniscient" as well.
7. I don't see perfection as anything more than what one teacher set up as the rule for the first day of class: "Do the right thing at the right place at the right time." As long as there is a right thing for the place and time, perfection is possible.
8. I don't see the need for an actual infinity for there to be God. What you seem to be arguing is that if God does not create an infinite number of people, the ability to express all good is impossible. But the fact we have sampling techniques that represent the whole through carefully curated study of a population segment.
What do you think about abstract objects? Don't they exist outside space and time? If they do, maybe it can help with the idea that God exists outside space and time? With platonism, we can have actual infinites and moral realism.
Do you think limits need more explanation than the limitless? For instance, you might imagine that both the universe's past and future are limitless and that space can be infinitely divided. But if I told you that the universe is not past eternal and that there is a minimum length of space (maybe the Planck Length, which is about 1.6 x10^-35 meters), suddenly you and others are probably in want of explanations.
If that is the case, would a being without limits need less explanation than a being with limits? Because if a being did have limits, we could always ask why that being have these particular limits as opposed to some other limits.
Could a theist hold that God being “perfectly good” just means God perfectly coincides with his commands? (It would of course be arbitrary, and perhaps that is enough to sink this view).
What are your thoughts on pascal wager arguments? I’ve been considering them a little. After thinking about it and listening to some smart people on the subject (MR) it now strikes me quite strongly that God wouldn’t put us in a situation where we’d have to make all of these wagers, comparing all the different religions to find out which seems most plausible to bet infinity on. It seems a commitment to being morally good and virtuous (amongst other things) would be what God would be mainly concerned with.