What are the odds of God existing?

What's standing in the way, logically, of something being eternal?True, it cannot be visualized or imagined, but it can be thought in an abstract sense.

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God does not "exist."---Paul Tillich, Christian theologian

Robin, your logic is quite apt.I of course believe that God imagined us long before we were even coherent enough to imagine Him.

No, not necessarily. The time-line you are imagining as ordering causality is integral to the universe. The universe just is, whether that internal time-line is infinite or finite.

Will get back to this, I promise...

Well, in the case of material things, the fact that we've never seen anything whatever that we couldn't impute a cause to.{OK, sorry, not thinking. Not thinking ultimately enough. Life itself even we don't have a cause for. Atoms too for that matter.}Mind or Being is something else. THAT, as I said, I can more easily think of as eternal.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-28-2006 11:52 AM

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Yes, if eternal. Otherwise, something has to happen to get them into existence.

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Perhaps. But that has not been demonstrated. It is possible that there is something (and that something might be the universe in which we live) that has only existed for a finite time, but has come to exist without a causal agent.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

And, of course, if one believes (as I am sure you do) that one has good evidence that there is a god, then the probability increases to be greater than 1/2.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

What I meant was, what is standing logically in the way of something or someone not being eternal?

Not in the context of this logic problem. It's not the kind of evidence that could be plugged into this problem.Outside of this problem of course, I know the answer already. God is self-existent, beginningless and endless, and He made everything else.

What is standing logically in the way of something coming into existence without a causal agent?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

No, it's not possible. Of course, if one wishes to think romantically, then anything is possible.

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God does not "exist."---Paul Tillich, Christian theologian

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No, it's not possible.

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That still has not yet been proven or demonstrated.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Yes it is

I can't grapple with that for some reason. It sounds meaningless to me that nothing is "standing in the way of" something's being eternal. I don't get it.And there are things we know are not eternal, right? So something is logically standing in the way of THEM not being eternal. My impulsive answer was that we know them to have a cause, implying that all things have a cause. Or maybe I mean a beginning.But I've been here too long and can't think straight any more, getting punchy, must go away for a while.

What we have to do, in order to get anywhere, is to take logic as a given. The universe is this thing that exists. If it came into existence, then that was a happening. If there was nothing to get this happening going, then it would never have happened. If there was nothing, there would still be nothing. So there had to always be something (or someone).This seems as plain to me as 2 plus 2 make 4.