Actually, the more I think about it and read other atheist-theist exchanges, I've decided I was on the right path. Its apparent, from atheist arguments on this board, and elsewhere that atheism isn't a positive position, but the only evidence an atheist can come up for his beliefs is that theist beliefs aren't consistent.

In other words atheism only exists in a theist vaccuum if you will. You don't need to have all the answers, as long as you think I don't have all the answers. This is why everytime I ask, "how can nothing create something" your only response isn't to work out this unsolvable paradox, but to say, "How can God do it?" That's not even an argument. However, its justification for you, because you believe that as long as my position doesn't make sense to you, yours doesn't have to make sense at all because its just automatically right.

So, then, I want to get back to my original line of discussion.

Before the universe existed, would there not be a general nothingness? Assuming God does not exist, wherein absolutely nothing (that means even less than a vacuum, because a vacuum requires a universe to exist) did time, space, and matter decide to spring into existence? As a curious objective observer to both arguments (...) I just want to know how you guys would answer this question.

Obviously time and space have a beginning. What started this process? How is it even possible? I'm just curious.

I don't even see an argument for matter appearing for no reason. There are two main problems with this point. No where in your link did it mention that matter can be created out of absolutely nothing. Perhaps you can steer me in the correct direction cause I might just be missing it.

The second problem with this argument is that it requires that the universe already be in existence. I does nothing in the way of getting rid of every cause for matter, because the universe is an indirect cause for the possibility of matter being created out of nowhere. In other words, if the universe doesn't exist, matter will never create itself out of nowhere.

Actually there's a third problem. This is a negative position. I can't prove that nothing causes matter to come into existence in certain cases. I can only prove that we don't know of a cause. The same thing happened with vestigial organs. We couldn't prove that they had no purpose, we could only prove that we didn't know the purpose. Then some time later we found out. So this is certainly not proof that there are things in the universe that lack a cause.


Back on another subject: If decay were truly random as you say, we would not be able to slap an absolute value like half-life on it. If half-life isn't a constant, then we can't be sure of the age of the earth. So out of curiosity, how do we know the radioactive decay won't randomly happen all at once and bring the half-life down to almost nothing?

And again, you can't prove it happens for no reason, you can only prove you don't know the cause. And in fact, I've read many other websites that claim there is a reason it happens. So I would like to know who is right, and why.

Either way, it has no bearing on my argument. You say random decay proves that nothing I say is right. But that's a non sequitor. (You can deny this is what you meant, but your statement "Things you've said were impossible are possible." doesn't leave much to the imagination). My question wasn't how does something happen for no reason once the universe is there for it happen for no reason, its how does the universe spring out of no where. This goes beyond the question of things happening for no reason, but asks where something springs from a void of anything, including cause and reason. For you its good enough to 'prove' that I was wrong on one thing, because then you don't have to address the paradox of nothing creating something.