Forget Gaudere’s omnipotent being who destroys all universes…
Where’s the alternate universe creature with finite powers sufficient to modify my universe to materialise me a new computer and who decides to do so. And shouldn’t there be an infinite number of them? 
I’ll take quantum computer wristwatch please. A 4096 bit version should be sufficient to allow me to break all current encryption schemes.
Hm, that’s how the NSA is reading our encrypted communications! 
Sorry, that’s the universe three doors down. You’re in the one where a bird will crap in your eye next time you look up. There’s a near-infinite number o’ those, too.
It is not correct, even taking a very liberal stance on teh “existence” of virtual particles, to speak of an “infinite number of possible actualizations”. Virtual particles do not spontaneously flick in and out of “existence”. They are an intermediate stage in a larger process, usually particle decay. Since there are a finite number of potential particle decay processes in the physical Universe, your Xeno’s reduction fails to actually achieve infinity.
You throw around probability assessments of the Big Bang as if we had any reasonable means of explicating that particular probability field. This is incorrect. Saying “all things are equally likely” when the truth is “the probability field is undeterminable” is also incorrect. The probability that the Big Bang might result in a '73 Buick (or that it might result in God) could well be zero. We have no way, at present, to discuss it meaningfully.
Experiments at the Fermi Accelerator were among those that have shown that parity does not hold on many levels. I fail to see how that allows you to assign probabilites to configurations of matter after the Big Bang. If anything, it would seem to argue that the probability field is not symmetric, that some outomes are more likely than others, and that some are not possible.
Virtual particle is a term which refers specifically to force carriers and intermediate quantum processes. No virtual particle has been, or can be (due to Heisenberg effects), observed. To discuss them as an “an especially well documented phenomenom” is misleading.
Other issues:
Your thought experiment does not address my point. I did discuss continuity of identity. I discussed transmission of matter (or energy or information) between discrete Universes in the Many Worlds scenario.
I asked no disengenuous questions. You have been using language in a loose way to draw or support extremely significant conclusions. You should be prepared to develop such ideas rigorously if you expect them to be taken seriously.
Your discussions of omnipotence are similarly lacking in rigor. You seem to want to accept or deny logic as it suits each particular. I do not know how omnipotence works, but that is not a valid way to use logic. Frankly, once you sy the capabilities of a hypothetical being transcend logic it pretty much makes it impossible to meaningfully discuss said being. On what basis will we hypothesize its qualities?
Polycarp
Why do you assume there is only one “place” outside of space and time? On what basis do you posit Hyperdimensionality is limited to (physical dimensions+1). Is it impossible to imagine that the Hyperdimension containing Omnipotence has its own distinguishing characteristics?
My assumption is that God is limitless (save for those that he puts on himself). Two limitless entities cannot coexist, except in relation to each other, as noted above. If, to paraphrase Anselm, God were N-hyperdimensional, he would not truly be God, because he could be superseded – and on Scylla’s hypothesis would be, by a god of N+1-hyperdimensionality.
Joel:
That’s only assuming that God is subject to the same laws of cause and effect as is his creation.
Spiritus (to Polycarp):
I don’t think he did. He did specifically call for an “illimitable” God.
It sounds like there’s a logical inconsistency here. If I’m reading this correctly (and please correct me if I’m not), the topic seems to read:
If all possibilities that can actualize do actualize in the form of multiple universes, and if it possible for an omnipotent being to exist, then an omnipotent being must exist.
First, as mentioned, the “many worlds” model of quantum mechanics need not be true, or even necessarily imply that anything that can possibly happen will happen in one universe or another.
Second, it is not necessarily true that it is possible for an omnipotent being to exist in any universe where He/She/It is governed by physical laws. This actually reminds me of Pascal’s Wager where which Pascal posits that there is a finite probability of God actually existing; in fact, it is entirely possible that this probability is identically zero. If a supposedly omnipotent being is governed by physical laws, this being is then constrained by those laws, and thus is not omnipotent. The existence of an omnipotent being that is governed by physical laws does not strike me as being logically consistent.
Science (at least as far as I know) does not refute the possibility of the existence of an omnipotent being nor does it refute the possibility that an omnipotent being created or otherwise influenced the development of the universe. The presence and influence of an omnipotent being is not addressed at all in science (or rather, I think that it should not be); as my college chemistry professor once said, science does not address the issue of God’s existence because God’s existence cannot be proven or disproven by applying scientific methodologies.
Now, it is consistent to say that an omnipotent being created the universe, the physical laws, and everything else, and then go about trying to model and understand these laws through the application of reasoning. Then again, it’s no more or less valid than saying “That’s just how things were” which I tend to think is the eventual explaination one must reach when trying to comprehend existence by using what is generally considered to be logic and rational thought.
…And please excuse the typos and grammatical errors… one day (hopefully in the near future), I’ll learn to get up off my lazy butt and actually proofread.
Scylla,
Gaudere beat me to the response to your question.
Gaudere,
The gist of the other link you provided is that Hartle & Hawking (H-H) have a theory called quantum cosmology, which includes an unconditional probability (called phi[h]) for the appearance of an H-H universe out of nothing. It’s stated that this probability is less than one (they use .95). The conclusion is that this theory is incompatible with theism.
Here’s a layman’s take on this. Cosmology is pretty speculative stuff by anyone’s standards. For a theory to explain a lot is good science. Not as good as being testable, but for something like cosmology, you must allow room for some untestable stuff.
For a theory to have anything to imply about the existence or non-existence of God is not good.
Oh, I don’t buy that the link I posted disproves God without a doubt either, knappy (although it does display a better understanding of QM than Scylla–no offense intended). The problem is, QM is the hot new thing and no one really understands it and people grab some vague derivative of a theory associated with it and try to shoehorn it into their pet projects. Homeopaths use it, “psychics” use it, creationists use it, philosophers use it, theists use it, atheists use it, etc., etc. QM is still science, and science only makes statements about the physical world and its laws; I don’t think Scylla’s omnipotent God, unbound by physical laws, can be proven to exist by the many-worlds theory. QM provides for every possible outcome of a quantum effect, but breaking the physical laws isn’t a possible outcome. The many-worlds theory states that the split universes influencing each other is impossible.
That’s because on the QM scale there are not any physical laws. Some events are just more probable than others.
Arthur Dent don’t surf?
For some events, the probability may be zero. Except for an omnipotent being, right? “With God, all things are possible.” 
I don’t think that is true even in a purely scientific realm. As far as whether people can manipulate these probablilities via a certain lifestyle, I don’t see why not. We are, after all, the observer in the equation.
Is it possible for an entity to destroy every one of the many-worlds from the beginning of time and never allow them to ever exist?
Gaudere: except in Ohio!!
I did not know that about the nature of space time. Hmmm. The possibilities not being infinite does throw a wrench in things. So much for the Nobel prize.
Allright, so TMWIQP doesn’t prove God if it’s true. Big deal. It’s not like you though it would when you clicked this thread anyway.
Spiritus:
virtual particles as force carriers or Bosuns for use in Feynman equations is one thing, but apparently you didn’t click my link. Some of these virtual particles actually exist. Virtual particles also refers to the short lived matter that is spontaneously creating and destroying itself all the time. Hawking radiation is another. These things are called virtual particles. They have been detected at Fermilab, among other places.
Hey, at the very least we got some interesting speculation into the nature of omnipotence.
I still say there can be only one!
Spiritus:
I’m familiar with your link:
Here’s a good one to show you what I’m talking about (since you didn’t click on my last.) 
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html
My perversely omnipotent yet powerless being may still roam on the space time foam, but I gotta admit it doesn’t seem as likely as last night.
Here’s another good link on virtual particles
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/209/apr14/virtual.html
If you think about it for a sec, you may see that the disproving of parity suggests that some of these particles maylinger.
Theoretically a whole bunch of them could linger in the exact form of a '73 Buick. Though the odds of this as I recall from Sagan’s book were somewhere like maybe once in 10 to the fiftieth billion years.
Without infinitely reducible time, now I see why, and without infinite universes it didn’t necessarily have to happen in another universe.
Ergo: Poof! No more omnipotent being/Buick.
Damn.
I’m sorry you didn’t get my whole teleportation analogy, but without infinite universes it doesn’t work either. So, never mind.
It’s not a total loss, Scylla…you at least got a reasoned conjecture on how to make a Trinity godhead from one of my posts!
Polycarp
Well, your restrictive clause seems the ultimate in escape hatches, doesn’t it? A limitless being cannot coexist with anything that is not a part of it. So, either there exists nothing which is not a part of “God”, of “God” is not limitless. Now, is we allow for self-imposed limits, then there is nothing to prevent an infinite number of “nearly-limitless” beings from coexisting.
scylla
I did read your first link, thank you. I have no idea why you would assume otherwise. You seem to think that “virtual particles” is a term that theoretical physicists throw around losely to account for several distinct phenomena.
I disagree. Virtual particle in all cases is a label used to conceptualize a force-carrier or intermediate stage of a quantum process. This inculdes the case where it is used to acount for minute energy fluctuations in a vacuum (as predicted under HUP). As to this claim:
No.
They have not.
Moreover, they cannot be.
Perhaps you should read some of those links you post more carefully. You will find passages like:
No virtual particle has ever been detected. In addition, if the theories which gave rise to virtual particles are correct then no virtual particle will ever be detected.
What can be detected are trace effects which are well accounted for by the theory of virtual particles. You may, perhaps, see no distinction between those two positions.
I repeat, you use the language of quantum mechanics loosely and apply the principals without rigor.
jmullaney
Quantum uncertainty does not mean “all things are possible”. It means that teh collapse of a well-defined probability wave cannot be predicted with exact precision.
Virtual particles may “actuallize”[sub]aarrgh – I can’t believe I typed that.[/sub] unpredictably in space-time, but they (if theory is correct) always conform to well-defined limits.
The probability that virtual particles will "actuallize in your living room in an exact replica of Salma Hayak in all ways except a slavish devotion to you are, I’m sorry to tell you, zero.
Not infinitesimal. Not “so small they can be discounted”. Zero.
Spiritus:
Earlier you said:
**
From the Fermilab website:
http://www.fnal.gov/directorate/public_affairs/letters/virtual_particles.html
"**“Virtual particles” are real – they exist in that they can be detected and can interact. But they are fleeting – they are soon gone with no trace of their existence. This phenomenon is related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum physics. Uncertainty in time multiplied by uncertainty in energy is equal to a constanst, Planck’s constant. If you probe a particle or even the vacuum with a short time scale, there can be a large amount of energy in which virtual particles can come into existence. **
“**Hawking radiation starts out as two virtual particles on the horizon of a black hole, one particle and one antiparticle. Usually, the virtual particles are a pair of photons. A photon is its own antiparticle, so this doesn’t contradict the fact that a particle-antiparticle pair are produced. However, one particle falls into the black hole, the other comes out. Once the particles separate due to the black hole’s gravitational field, they are no longer virtual particles, but real particles. They can’t destroy each other because they are separated by the horizon. The strange thing (and this is possibly what is confusing you) is that the particle that falls in has negative energy. That means that it reduces the mass of the black hole. You may have been confusing the ‘anti’ in antiparticle as meaning negative energy, it really means negative charge. **”
And here’s still another quote from Fermilab which claims the detection of all but two particles in the standard model, including bosuns (but not the Higgs)
**"Actually the Standard Model can incorporate the large vector boson masses by various techniques. The one that seems to make the most sense is called spontaneous symmetry breaking. Basically it is a phenomenon which is not unique to high energy physics. Superconductors exist because of a symmetry breaking mechanism so we know it exists in nature.
In the Standard Model, the electroweak interactions (electromagnetic and weak nuclear) of the known particles are described by a set of bosons which follow a symmetry known as SU(2)xU(1) which has 4 bosons as force carriers. But all the particles of the theory are massless. In order to generate masses, you can introduce (two) (scalar) particles known as Goldstone bosons (actually they are complex fields so there are 4 components).
The forces in the system including the Goldstone bosons can be arranged such that an ambiguity in the vacuum expectation value of the system exists. As soon as you have to choose a vacuum value as a starting parameter, you have “broken the symmetry”. The layman’s description is usually that, at this point, 3 of the 4 boson components are eaten by the 3 intermediate vector bosons and acquire a mass. The massless boson that is left is the photon.
The fourth component of the Goldstone field is known as the Higgs boson, is probably a couple of hundred GeV in mass and is the last particle not yet found (except for the tau neutrino) in the Standard Model. This is why the physics community is building the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland/France. It may be found at Fermilab though. The mass of the top quark and the mass of the W intermediate vector boson can be used to predict the mass of the Higgs boson but the range is still too large to be sure without trying various scenarios. **
I think that should be enough to make it pretty clear that you are in error concerning your belief that virtual articles exist as convention only.