I'm an atheist so I do not think there are any deities. However, if there were, here is a list of the essential attributes it would have to have:
Immortal/Eternal
Traditional Buddhism doesn't deny the existence of deities. But it includes deities in the realm of samsara and rebirth. So in that religion, deities aren't immortal, only very long lived. But gods can tire, lose their touch, finally die and be reborn as humans, animals or hell-beings. In Buddhism being a god might not be the most auspicious kind of rebirth, due to the terrible temptation that gods are exposed to. With gods, it's very easy for everything to become a matter of 'Me! Me! Me!. (Think the Biblical Yahweh with his slightly pathological concern with preserving his own 'lordship'.) That's the seed of their eventual downfall. As a result of these kind of ideas, Buddhism evolved a very interesting early form of humanism, in which in some ways, it's thought better and more auspicious to be a human being than to be a god.
'Omniscient' means 'all knowing'. And 'knowing', in turn, is a psychological/cognitive state. So this attribute seems kind of anthropomorphic to me, leading inexorably towards the idea of a personal divinity. I'm kind of skeptical about mankind's incessant (but thoroughly understandable) tendency to imagine ultimate principles in our own image, as if they were human beings puffed up really really large. Why must the ultimate principle of being itself 'know' anything? (Isn't knowing kind of a dualistic (subject-object) state by its very nature?) Why shouldn't we imagine the ultimate principle, whatever it might be, as simply
being?
For that matter, why must there be only one ultimate principle? I've always kind of liked polytheism because it seemed to mirror some aspects of experience better than monotheism. Sometimes our abstract principles do seem to be working at cross purposes, seemingly pulling in different directions. So why shouldn't people think that there might be several different principles at work, sometimes in concert and sometimes in conflict, with none of them fully in control?
I'm not sure what that refers to. A purported revelation might be thought 'infallible', in the sense that it doesn't contain any errors (the Christians usually use the word 'inerrant' to express that idea) or that it contains everything humans need to know for salvation. I guess that the idea here might be that if a deity does reveal something, the revelation must always be true. But I'm not sure why people should include this as a divine attribute. For one thing, it's easy to think that there are no special revelations. It's also possible to imagine that if there are, that the deities that provided them might be deceitful on occasion.
Christians would add "Benevolence" but I can easily imagine a universe in which the deity is indifferent or hostile (no joy in that universe!)
If somebody believes that this universe is the work of some single deity, then the existence of suffering seems to create some serious difficulties for those who want to include 'omnibenevolence' among the divine attributes.
What attributes would you add or remove?
I think that I'd remove all of them.
