Hi, I am going to answer your post as a Catholic. So forgive the dogma I have been indocrinated into.
1. The universe always existed. Possibly, but spacetime and matter did not. If existance is a extention of what always was:ie the universe. Then we are a extention of God as well; who always was.
2. God being perfect why need to create anything?
It was not a need, nor was it necessary. It was out of a manifestation of love of God's perfection that he wanted to share this.
3. God is a uncreated, undifferentiated, manifested reality. He is the essence of being itself for itself. We recieve our existance through him. If there is something that is before or something that trancends God...then that is God.
4. Where in the universe is the universe? Space and time and matter and energy all follow the natural laws that man has discovered , but there is a point in our knowlege that limits our ability to probe further than the moment prior to Plankes time. There is no before. There simply is a potential for something or not something.
Every instance of there being something is a moment that the universe maintains it's homeostasis to support existance rather than non existance. This to me is rather profound when you consider how caotic the quantum foam is beneath our rather ordered biochemical existance as sentient organisms..
Ok..all dogma and no bark. Atheist and agnostic relax-- I am not stating any of this as fact so chill daddy-yo.
edit for spacing by PB
This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 04-06-2006 03:14 AM
"One is punished most for ones virtues" Fredrick Neitzche