... since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. -- St Paul, Epistle to the Romans
Suppose the existence and fine-tuning of the universe are best explained by a creator. Well, OK, but what sort of creator? Looking for the best explanation for things is clearly a reliable way to proceed: once we've settled the question of design by this method, we had better follow where it leads.
For if the Law was not ordained by the perfect God himself, as we have already taught you, nor by the devil, a statement one cannot possibly make, the legislator must be some one other than these two. In fact, he is the demiurge and maker of this universe and everything in it; and because he is essentially different from these two and is between them, he is rightly given the name, intermediate. -- Ptolemy's Letter to Flora
What goes for the Law goes for the world too: it's a mixed up sort of place, containing both good things and bad things. While other explanations are
possible (just as, say, it is possible, though of course unlikely, that the universe somehow arose without a creator),
Ptolemy's explanation seems the
best one: the creator is not perfect. Not evil either, though, just... middle of the road. Doing the best they can, perhaps.
Is it impossible for someone to create universes if they aren't perfectly good? Could even a very technically skilled person be a bit of a dick? It seems odd, then, to suppose that the creator has the traditional attributes of omnipotence, perfect goodness, and so on.
... as this goodness is not antecedently established, but must be inferred from the phenomena, there can be no grounds for such an inference, while there are so many ills in the universe, and while these ills might so easily have been remedied, as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject. I am Sceptic enough to allow, that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such attributes as you suppose; but surely they can never prove these attributes. --Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume
There's an argument, which you may occasionally hear made by William Lane Craig, that we're not a position to know that the creator doesn't have sufficiently good reasons for allowing bad stuff to happen: he (according to Craig, the creator is a "he") is said to move in mysterious ways, after all. Unfortunately, as
John D relates, this makes it hard to see why we should intervene if we see someone suffering: who are we to say what good may come of it? Moreover, if our understanding of bad and good outcomes is so suspect, how are we then in a position to know that the creator is good?
He may be fully convinced of the narrow limits of his understanding; but this will not help him in forming an inference concerning the goodness of superior powers, since he must form that inference from what he knows, not from what he is ignorant of. The more you exaggerate his weakness and ignorance, the more diffident you render him, and give him the greater suspicion that such subjects are beyond the reach of his faculties. --Dialogues, again
Perhaps someone could appeal to a sacred book to show that the creator is good. Still, these things seem open to interpretation: we'd best leave Craig and Ptolemy to argue about the details of their shared scriptures. In any case, we'd need convincing that the book was a reliable source on the subject.
Perhaps, in the absence of external evidence, someone could come to a strong inner conviction that the creator is perfectly good. But it seems this sort of confidence can cut both ways. As Chris Hallquist writes, "If there is any actual case where we are confident that divine inaction is incompatible with perfection, then we must conclude that God does not exist." (It seems that "God does not exist" might be a little hasty here, but we'd best leave Hallquist to argue with Ptolemy on that score).
Given all this, it seems odd to me that so many people confidently assert that the creator is good. We rightly prefer to believe that our instruments are broken than that we have disproved the Law of Gravitation, but it's interesting to test our limits: if you are such a person, is there any such case you can imagine which would convince you to change your position? If not, why do you trouble yourself with evidence about the creator's moral character either way? It would seem better to just accept that some people have one conviction about the creator, and some another. On the other hand, if we do look to the evidence, it seems that what we observe is best explained by a creator who is imperfect, and possibly indifferent.
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