Something coming out of nothing is impossible.

The impossible happened. Therefore God. Wait....wut created God...F***!!!

I don't understand something.

Therefore, God.

The origin of the world of squares and circles was, by necessity, started by a square circle.

Then God would be a contingent being…

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-necessary-being/
God and Other Necessary Beings
It is commonly accepted that there are two sorts of existent entities: those that exist but could have failed to exist, and those that could not have failed to exist. Entities of the first sort are contingent beings; entities of the second sort are necessary beings…There are various entities which, if they exist, would be candidates for necessary beings: God, propositions, relations, properties, states of affairs, possible worlds, and numbers, among others.

… and the typical theist’s conception of God…

1. God as a Necessary Being
Perhaps the strongest motivation for thinking that God exists necessarily is perfect-being or Anselmian theology. On an “Anselmian” conception of God, God is the greatest possible being; it is in the very nature of God that he essentially (and necessarily) possess all compossible perfections. Necessary existence is a perfection, it is thought, and therefore God must possess it.

… would be a misconception of God.

Yes this is the problem with imaginary beings; you can ascribe any quality you like to them and then insist that that quality is implicit in the meaning of the word.

I can easily conceive of a creator-God that is not the most perfect being.

Do impossible happenings prove an existing God?

Is a person who prefers comedy over logic insane?

Don't post drunk (or high).

Omnipotence (from Latin: Omni Potens: "all power") is unlimited power.

If an entity is the only power, then he is all power and his power is not limited by anything external to himself, consequently, his power is unlimited. Ditto with all good and all knowing. If the only good/knowing is with God, then God is all good and all knowing. That is, if God is all there is, then God is omni-everthing.

I think the conceptual difficulty arises from attempting to put God in a context when God is the context, per the theist's conception of things. So, when God (Omni, the All) is conceived of as the All, then as opposed to the infinite, which I agree seems inconceivable at least in terms of an infinite concrete being, then God is conceivable. All one needs to do is not conceive of anything outside, or inherently external to, God.

If I conduct myself in a logical manner and my opponent chooses insanity....how shall I deal with him?

/deep thoughts (see post 24,25 for conclusive answer to thread)

So does God. Whether it's a deist God, a semantic God, or the Judeo-Christian God.

This "something" could be the universe itself, Occam's Razoring the deity right out of necessity. Or it could be the case that "things" have existed for an eternity, and predate our universe. If God is eternal, why not pre-universe materials? Semantically, logically, there is no difference, and it avoids all kinds of sloppy epistemology.

I'm going to reduce this for ease of comprehension or "reduction of noise" to:

"Why can't there be eternal non living materials that everything came from"

They have to be non living because otherwise we're just describing God and playing a semantic game.

Hmm, I have to think about this.

No one is saying there can't be eternal non-loving material from which everything developed. If this is true, then it would reason that all matter is eternal.

I'm saying that that question is the only viable challenge to my proof. This is the question I need to answer for victory.

Now I understand why Duffee is always going the sentience attack route.

I find the grand canyon an awe inspiring place...its quite beautiful.

Man didn't make it.

God must have.

Not necessarily. I might not accept the premise that something can't come out of nothing. We don't have an example of nothing from which to test.

There are none...

You're not being serious right?

This simple truth is rarely brought up. It might not be possible for absolute nothingness to have ever been (or not been).

It's odd that "atheists think everything came from nothing" has caught on as an apologistic sound byte, when theists already own this idea (God supposedly spoke everything into existence, from nothing).

Why does a creator need to be of unlimited power? How much "power" was needed to create a universe? An unknowable amount, in perhaps unknowable units - but surely still a finite amount, even if it is staggeringly large? So, why can't a creator of the universe just be sufficiently powerful? Other than the obvious (i.e. it no longer matches the definition of an almighty God)?

Can't we use this exact same form of argument to prove the opposite conclusion?

1. The non-existence of God is either logically necessary or logically impossible.
2. The logically impossible is not conceivable.
3. If the non-existence of God is conceivable, then the non-existence of God is logically necessary.
4. The non-existence of God is conceivable.
5. Therefore, the non-existence of God is logically necessary.

The only viable challenge to a proof of God is in answering this question:

"Why can't there be eternal non-living materials that everything came from?"

Non-living to living hasn't been recorded in a lab, or an exhaustive theory allowing it to even be conceived. What I mean is; there is no theory where we're like "oh, if we could just produce this much electricity, we're gold, but we can't yet."

If a materialist can recreate this scenario through mechanical means, showing a plausible scenario for this to happen (for extra credit); they win (I guess?). So non-living to living is the Holy Grail, so to speak.

At the present time, unless a mechanicalist can do what hasn't been done or imagined; Materialism rests on the faith that non-living to living is possible.

Ironically, the christian way also requires faith that non-living to living is possible.

1 Corinthians 15:10 if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.

We both are looking to complete our reasoning, but our limited resources require us to make a leap of faith.

We don't KNOW how life came from chemicals but we certainly have reasonable models and theories

I haven't watched the vid yet, but I sum the theory up as, "try to sound as confusing as possible to make it sound like it's just over your head, but we're basically there."

Would you agree that if the materialist cannot crack all the coded words, and truly comprehend the theory himself (even if true), he's still going on faith to accept it?

Video or text, your choice. We're already at the stage where we can create synthetic DNA from 4 bottles of chemicals and some yeast. Give us a few more years, and the life from non life will be made scientifically irrelevant.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...ynthetic-life/
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/liv...venter.TED.cnn

Being hard to understand doesn't make it untrue. You accept that nuclear bombs work, but if you were told the detail of how it works you may well find it very confusing.

You're asking if I agree that a layman accepting a scientific theory that he doesn't understand is taking things on faith? It's a good question. To give a full answer we'd have to get into a lot of detail about the difference and definitions of faith and knowledge. If you want to discuss the difference it would probably be better to start a new thread, but I'd certainly agree that blindly accepting the word of a scientist without considering the evidence is taking things on faith.