Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[Angrboda]

No, I did not say that.  I said the cosmological argument can't be applied because we can't know whether that predecessor universe began to exist.  The rest is your invention.

If the purported predecessor universe didn't begin to exist, then it's eternal, and we use the same argument as before: inside this (eternal) predecessor universe, there has to be an infinite duration preceding the point where it causes our universe -impossible.

Thus, any possible predecessor universe must be finite in time, otherwise we have an eternal past. And because of that, we can still apply the cosmological argument to the predecessor universe.

False. We can't even say that our own universe required a beginning or else is past eternal, much less a universe we know nothing about.

You are simply wrong in your claim that any universe that did not begin to exist must be past eternal. How would you even know such a thing?

I meant deductive inferences, but even inductive inferences are falsified by counter-examples, it's just a question of how much.  Since it's irrelevant, I won't discuss that aspect further.  You stated an absolute rule that has a counter-example; that invalidates the rule as an absolute, regardless of whatever else you might say.  Since your rule admits of exceptions, it is not itself a bar to a valid exception to it and is thus not absolute.  I'm not making any case for a malevolent deity, but rather pointing out the flaw in your reasoning that a malevolent deity could not be responsible for the good that exists in the world.  For the same reason that a good god may allow evil, a bad god may allow good; it may even insist on it.  It's the same logic in both cases, that an overriding goal may justify subgoals that are not themselves apparently consistent with that overriding goal.  That you endorse the logic when made on behalf of a good god, but object when it is used to defend the possibility of a bad god either shows that you are a hypocrite, or that you simply haven't the first clue about what you are talking about.

Regarding the issue of benevolence/malevolence, my argument was simply that the instances of good outweigh evil. If this is the case, we can't infer a malevolent deity based on minor instance of evil. We know, for example, that natural disasters are occasional, they are not the default state of the Earth. One simply can't ignore the default state and use an exceptional state as a premise in an inductive argument.... you know what I mean.

This is the second time you've lied to me in this discussion. You said the following:

It's possible to argue for benevolence on the grounds of the ability of creation to fulfill good deeds, our inner moral compass, the maternal instinct, etc. All these mundane observations can serve as premises to prove some property that a deity likely has. Something can't give or cause what it doesn't have, if this rule holds (or, at worst, is probable), then a malevolent deity is unlikely to have created mothers who instinctively protect their children.

[emphasis mine]

As pointed out, the rule is not valid in this context and it doesn't justify thinking it unlikely that a malevolent deity would create the maternal instinct.

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth in more ways than one. If the existence of evil is compatible with a benevolent deity, then the existence of good is compatible with an evil deity. You can't carve out a greater likelihood for one or the other, as both depend upon the same argument.