Something exists and nothing exists, simultaneously. We are not in the nonexistent part.
In other words - God and the Universe are one and the same.
Which makes a preverse kind of sense:
Omnipotence? Check. The universe is capable of enacting any action at all that happens in the universe…
Omniscience? Check. All the knowledge of all events that transpire in the universe is encoded in the very atoms and energy that comprise it. Incidentally, I think one of the very best arguments against the existence of an omniscient God which is not isomorphic to the Universe is just this - the most compact way of detailing every last bit of knowledge about the Universe is in terms of information about the whereabouts of each of its particles - which is most compactly held by the particles themsleves. There is no full, detailed knowledge of the universe that is less than all of the universe itself.
Uniqueness (monotheism)? Check. After all, if God is all of the universe, then clearly there can be no other God…
Not so sure about all the anthropomorphic bits, though - seems like these were thrown in for good measure by us lowly humans… 
Now if you want to be a Gaian and say that the World is sentient… that’s a different debate. But I think it is possible to reach the conclusion that, logically, no Omnipotent, Omniscient God can exist that is discernable from the Universe itself. And I personally do not believe the Universe to be sentient, which makes me, almost perforce, an atheist (at least in terms of the Abrahamic religions - any member of any non-monothieistc Pantheon could be accounted for by sufficiently advanced technology 
)
Dani
I remember in college I took an intro to philosophy course. I was expecting, but still amazed, to see how many 18 year olds took the course thinking philosophy was little more than asking “Do we really exist?” :rolleyes:
But can the Universe create an object too heavy for it to lift?
You guys are just going in circles.
Here’s a “fact” for you to consider.
A decade or so ago a couple of mathmaticians calculated the probability of the Universe coming into existence spontaneously. They came up with 1 chance in 10 to the 100th power. (I have no idea how they came up with this number) Since anything over 10 to the 50th power is considered a scientific impossibility, this implies that, in order for the “big bang” to have happened, a miracle would be in order. That implies a miracle creator.
“And God said, let there be…”
How can nothingness have qualities, such as “lacking”?
You’re mistaken on so many levels. It wasn’t a mathematician, it was a quack who worked for the ICR. There is no such thing as a scientific impossibility. There is no intrinsic implication of agency in emergence. And the Big Bang did not necessarily need any cause to occur.
Quite, Lib.
I think the answer is “We don’t know, and we probably never will.”
If I understand my superstring theory… truthfully, mostly we don’t exist. All matter is essentially just vibrations in space and time. Sort of like a picture of a wave when you talk. Ever seen those? You talk, and it makes a sort of sine wave? Or on most MP3 players, how visualizations turn sound into images? These vibrations interact with each other, and form things like energy and matter.
Why is there space and time? Nobody quite knows. Random chance? Eventually, in the nothing, there was a chance vibration, maybe, and it snowballed.
As Stephen Hawking put it, the question is backwards. Why WOULDN’T anything exist? i.e., given that we can generally agree that things exist, the relevant question is: why it would be any other way? We don’t even know if things CAN be another way.
I prefer more relevant questions, like, “how much beer is left” and “where did you put my beer”… I don’t care if my beer is superstrings or merely quarks, as long as it does its job… well, you know those Corona commercials? I’m gonna go do that by my pool while you scratch your head about why anything and/or nothing does/does not exist.
That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t calculate probability if you don’t know all the possibly outcomes and the system that determines which are more likely than any other. Almost by definition, we have no knowledge of either the range of possible outcomes or the underlying system that weights them, if at all. You can’t calculate the probability of rolling a 12 on a dice roll if you don’t know how many sides the dice have, what the numbers on them are, and whether the dice are weighted or not.
It’s an absurdity to say that “something” came from “nothing.” “Things” follow ideas, and ideas are formulated in minds. Therefore, the universe being a “thing,” there had to have been a “mind” preceding it.
If there is no impossibility in science it is only because, “with God all things are possible.”
Agreed. But no one is saying that.
Well, close. There had to be an essence preceding it, but not for the reason you state.
That’s a fairly sloppy statement. God exists in every possible world, but impossible worlds do not exist. It is better to say, “With God, every metaphysic is possible.”
Sorry, I have to call you on this one. “Things” don’t necessarily follow ideas, and ideas aren’t necessarily formulated in minds. “Things” form in nature (in the broad context) constantly without anything wanting it to or planning for it to.
I don’t think that’s what he meant. There is nothing at all analytic about nature. Therefore, things (in their essence) follow ideas. That is, an idea is required even to identify a thing. Where he went wrong, as I see it, was the implication that because things follow ideas, ideas precede existence.
"Once upon a time there was nothing, which exploded." - Terry Pratchett.
I don’t think an idea is required to identify a thing. A thing can exist independent of any idea of its existence.
I didn’t say it couldn’t exist. I said it couldn’t be identified. Identification is a praxis of sentient entities.
Observation or induction give variant descriptions of the universe, but all of them to which the question might apply are limited to having existance as a possible characteristic, given the existance of the question itself. The concatenation of consideration and inference, or examination and observation might be valid, or might not, but the differentiaton between those two cases also must exist to be germane to the argument either for or against the original question.
Given the question of the OP, then there must be existance, and from the existance of the question, we must assume the existence of a universe in which something might exist. The universe assumed must be assumed or observed to have some characteristics, each of which must thereby exist itself. The consequences of the existence of each of those characteristics, or the non existance of those which do not exist each have consequences, and those too, must exist.
Your desired answer, or its converse are not subject to proof, in either case, until you define a whole range of concepts, such as god, create, begining, and why. Proving God didn’t do it is as much a matter of ignoring your own rules of logic as proving He did. Putting God in a jar is not a matter of faith, no matter how pretty the jar is.
Tris