We know that God is benevolent because of the things He does: healing the sick, making the blind see, oh and saving us all from the hell we deserve.

Now it is theoretically possible (assuming the definition of “good” is some absolute outside of God) that “good” is really x and God is just tricking us to make us all believe that y is good. This idea would mean that everything we believe to be “good” (healing the sick, making the blind see, etc) is actually evil and everything we believe to be “evil” (murder, rape, etc) is actually good. Yeah i guess that’s a possibility, but then you begin to wonder what difference it would make. Even if murder was the real definition of good, what reason would you have to pursue that good?

So I couldn’t quickly find any examples of my above claim, but oh well, it’s late and I don’t particularly care right now.

If by universe he is referring to all the galaxies, and terrestrial bodies that exist and that it is expanding in accordance to current cosmological findings, then God most certainly, in His holy Will, directs where it is moving or growing to according to being ‘all-powerful’.

Now concerning the created beings in this universe, some were given a free will and intellectual disposition. Due to the fact that these few organisms or humans in themselves have a free will to choose how they want to satisfy their happiness, they can choose to whether they want to share in a life of grace with God or not seek God at all and pursue their own prideful way to a happiness.

It brings us to the beginning of Christianity, it is God who gives us this free will at the cost of us hurting Him. He could have easily made us into tin soldiers imparting His will and working to solely praise and glorify Him. Then he could just destroy them and all of creation at His will.

Now if in the interrogator’s case of a ‘religious believer’ he refers to a Christian living in full grace with the three personal God, the believer in itself would never accuse their God of such treachery to begin with.

Now on a more logical approach which is in accordance to philosophy, evil is in itself a
perversion of good. (This requires a lot of elaboration to be just stated as is btw) To put it even more straightforward, one does not know what a crooked line is without previous knowledge of what is a straight line is. As a side note high philosophy always requires some kind of analogy. To assume that God is a ‘trickster’ originally evil, but deceiving us in acting benevolent is pure nonsense when
the two actions are in clear contrast of each other to exist coherently in an all powerful being.
To tie it into Christian theology, the whole story about Satan being a fallen angel is no fairy tale. Satan or St. Lucifer was once an angel singing in chorus of praise with all the other order of angels, but it was through his pride that he seeks his own happiness to become like God. Now as stated in Genesis, God in his infinite goodness the angels have also been given a free will. So Satan chose his own way, gathered an army of other angels, and rebelled. We are in a civil war fighting ground. This leads us to choosing our own form of happiness in the way the world defines it as power, money and being like gods superior to others. The meaning of sin according to it’s own root word, is missing the mark.

I could keep going, but let me know how it goes. To keep it short, as was stated from someone: I’d rather live as if there was a God, than live as if there wasn’t one and then finding out in the end that there is. : )

Hope everything is well in the Navy, Ensign Conrad. Godspeed!

“I believe in God as I believe the sun has risen, not because I can see it, but because by way of it, I can see everything else.”
- C.S Lewis