PART 2:
For example, consider the conception of God in the John Gospel.
Here, John pretty much accepts that God was the creator of
everything (John 1.3) and declares that God himself is
absolutely invisible ("no one has ever seen God"--John 1.18).
Yet, God is a being of love with a definite purpose:
  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
  everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal
  life.
  Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the
  world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
  [John 3.16-17 NRSV]
This God, as described, is not necessarily a perfect and
all-powerful God.  He does not have the power to make himself
visible, since it is required of him to produce the Son (i.e.
Jesus Christ) as the Word, to convey his intentions to humanity
(the world).  This God is a weaker being than the God of Exodus,
for example.
But here, although direct appeal to the Problem of Evil cannot be
made, there is a serious problem with the rationality of the
imperfect being so described.
We know, for example, that Jesus was probably illiterate.
Certainly there is no evidence of his having left any writings.
John himself seems to declare that Jesus could write (John 8.6);
but we know that the entire passage John 7.53-8.11 is a forgery.
There is no other evidence in the John Gospel that Jesus could
communicate the Word by writing.  And, even if this passage were
NOT a forgery, it still does not say that Jesus communicated THE
WORD by writing:
   They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge
   to bring against him.  Jesus bent down and wrote with his
   finger on the ground.
   [John 8.6 NRSV]
Facts of these kinds raise a conundrum against the existence of
the God of the John Gospel: Why would this God have sent his Son
as an illiterate person to transmit The Word to humans?
Surely, if a morally imperfect and partially powerful God sent his
Son into the world to save it by encouraging humans to believe in
Him (an admittedly vainglorious assumption), why did God fail to
give humans a better chance for such encouragement?
The facts that Jesus left no writings and was probably illiterate
show not merely that God made a mistake; rather, no one can
possibly understand how any being, as described in John, could
have acted the way he did.
Surely, this God would have incarnated the Son in a human
character of much better communicative abilities.  Surely, the
hosannas to His Glory would have been much greater if Jesus had
been a better communicator.  The humans of this world would have a
better chance of appreciating His Word if He had taken steps to
leave it in relatively indelible form.  Many unnecessary wars (but
not all of them--the Johannine God is NOT a perfect being) would
not have occurred.  The New Testament would have become a much
more reliable guide to the Faith of the Father, requiring no
separate Creedal statements.  The probability of Man rendering
Glory to God would have been much greater, etc.
Why did God make the situation so complicated, given His nature as
described by John?
No good answer to this question can be provided.
We therefore look to the psychological knowledge and the
assumptions of first century writers, and find that the real
reason why these accounts don't satisfy even the test of
second-best rationality, let alone the test of perfect rationality
assumed by the Ontological Argument, is that the writers of the
Bible were mostly concerned with propaganda.  They had an oral
tradition and various other religious writings to deal with.  And
they each had to concoct a story that seemed attractive to
congregations without being totally out of line with these
traditions.
So their response to the writing problem was complicated by two
inconsistent purposes: (1) to reflect a tradition grown up from
the stories of ignorant and illiterate men, and (2) to tell a
consistent story to congregations, the priests in which could read
and write.
Did God play a role here?  This is improbable, since even a
vainglorious God would have done a much better job in the 1st
century.  The reality of the Johannine God just cannot be
defended, not even on second-best rationality grounds.
Bob
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