Goodness and being are synonymous.
Important qualification: goodness and being are convertible, not synonymous. They
differ in sense, so they do not
mean the same thing as they would if they were synonymous. The reason why God’s being pure being implies God’s being pure goodness is that goodness and being are identical
in referent.
I am somewhat sympathetic to KnowtheSilence here. Apologetics does not give enough attention to omniscience. Many atheists will feel comfortable with a cosmological argument if they think it can’t be shown that the entity in question is intelligent. Tragically some think that theists have not even considered addressing the question and just make an unwarranted leap out of pure giddiness. And in some cases I’m afraid they’re warranted.
I would disagree with this:
Very briefly, a thing cannot give that which it does not have. Ergo, reason and free will, being a feature of reality, must be a part of the source or ground of all reality.
There is a chance that this argument could be heavily qualified to achieve the desired result, but right now it is invalid because God also causes material beings to exist, but God is not material.
However, it is from the bolded statement that an argument to God’s omniscience can be constructed, by qualifying that what is given must exist formally, eminently, or virtually in the sum of all its causes (ie. the principle of proportionate causality). What you seem to be arguing is that reason and will are possessed formally by creatures, so they must be possessed by God, but in that restricted sense the principle is not true. (In a sense your argument is valid, but the sense of “a part of the source” that would be true here will not help one to conclude that God essentially has intellect or will, just that intellect and will are eminently or virtually contained in him, in the same sense that blueness is eminently or virtually contained in him.*)
God’s intelligence lies in the fact that, in order to cause the world to be, God possesses the forms of all that exists (and whatever other forms could possibly be instantiated) eminently or virtually, and this mode of possessing forms is what is essential to intelligence on Aquinas’s philosophy of mind.
(source in ST)
Will follows from intelligence. And KnowtheSilence is right that without these, there is not a compelling case for God’s
moral goodness, even if there is one for his goodness. This is because prior to the 16th-17th centuries, people tended not to talk about “morality.” The closest thing had to do with ethics, whereby what we call “moral goodness” was a species of goodness (which can be predicated of every being) in specifically rational beings. (A tree can be good, but can’t be ethical, because it cannot apply principles of right reason to achieving its ends, even though it
has ends.) So without a case for God’s intelligence and will, the argument for goodness will be unsatisfying as well.
*Forgive me. I honestly don’t remember the difference between these terms.
I don’t take this to be a fault of your comic. It doesn’t purport to argue all of the divine attributes. But I sympathize with atheists who will finish it and feel content.