h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the slight loopholes I have found in Atheistic logic is the idea that God is highly improbable. This is true, but it also creates the logical loophole.

In most religions, God is thought to be timeless, in that, he never came to be at a specific point in time, but rather, has existed and will exist forever. But there is also a chance that He just popped out of no where, right? Athiests have to ask the same question for the universe.

Is the universe timeless? Has it just existed forever and will continue to exist forever? Or, did it, at an infinite improbability, mind you, just go *poof* and appear? This is where things get interesting.

If the universe, of infinite size, just came out of nothing, isn't it equally as probable that a single being of infinite complexity could have done this? Or, if the universe is said to exist forever, isn't it equally as likely that some sort of omnipotent being could exist forever?

Both are infinitely improbable.

But, it is a widely accepted idea that the universe, indeed, exists, which, unless this notion is proved wrong, proves that things of infinite improbability can happen, and have happened.

Think about this:

If there was a man who had never heard of any of today's widely-accepted concepts, you would spend hours and hours trying to convince him that everything was made of unbelievably small particles called atoms, that atoms were even divided up into even smaller particles and those particles were divided into even smaller particles. He would refuse to believe that the Earth was actually round, that there are billions and billions of other planets like our only each is entirely unique, and that they all orbited giant balls of gas that burn with such intensity that they can heat things millions of miles away. He would think you were completely insane.

But yet all these things are true.

The idea that God created the universe is no more improbable than the idea that the universe just started existing. One had to happen. I have chosen to belive the former.

Hope this gives you a lot to ponder on.

Of course, before any matter existed, there was no way to measure time or the age of the lack of anything, so whenever the Universe or, if you choose to believe in him, God, originated, that point would be the beginning of time. Because anything that has existed since the beginning of meaningful time has always existed, the distinction between something that began to exist and always existed is irrelevant.
In my opinion, it is also irrelevant whether the Universe was created at all, unless that creator still does exist, which is currently unprovable, so I am basically becoming tired of argument about this kind of thing. If one was not raised to believe in a god, one will probably not be convinced of it later in life, as you pointed out in reverse with your fourth-to-last paragraph.

"If the universe, of infinite size, just came out of nothing, isn't it equally as probable that a single being of infinite complexity could have done this? Or, if the universe is said to exist forever, isn't it equally as likely that some sort of omnipotent being could exist forever?"

But God must be more complex than the universe in order to have created it, so by proposing Her, you make the problem much larger. Especially since you probably want a God who is at least as intelligent as humans, which makes Her even more complicated than one might otherwise postulate.

I am a believer in Pantheistic Natural God (All is God).
It is impossible to speak of the God, but only of the attributes of him, so he is unpronouncble, being fathomable in experience only by his atributes, of which we have some knowledge to a certain extent
The attributes of God are Matter,and Laws prescribing the operation of this matter - Laws functional (classical Physics' laws) and Laws Stochastic(Probability Theory). His will is evidenced by 1) the particular composition of the Matter and the Laws Functional and 2) by the particular outcomes of phenomena governable by the Laws Stochastic. And beyond this pronouncements one would better not venture in genereal understanding of the God and not overreach our practical experience.It is much better to apply oneself to mastering natural sciences and mathematics, which endevour to describe God's attributes by the best means possible.
Another attribute of God are the Laws Moral (but to which extent and whether, they are dependable on Laws Natural and how to fit them in the picture I have yet not the least idea beyond the Kantian Categoric Imperative ("do as you would be done by").
With regard to elaborations contained in the article itself about extra demension needed for the existense of God or in order to concive his existense),I would parry by saying that spacial extent might be an axiliary measure of time,a mere derivative, and One that ever was, ofcourse, pervades all space in our Newtonian understanding of it,which might not be correct.