DiabloFans

That was awesome. Didn't the main page article say weapon throw was worthless? Interesting to see it used here.

With the ladder reset looming on the horizon, I've been giving a lot of thought towards what class and spec I'll be popping this ladder's cherry with.

Usually I go blizzard sorcy (20 blizz, 20 cold mastery, 20 ice blast, 20 ice bolt, 1 warmth, 1 telekinesis, 1 teleport, couple other points to play with), which has served me well up to and including solo Hell Baal runs. However, for this round, I think I'm going to start with a poison nova necro, which I've never done before, and which I really have no idea how to do. Should make things exciting.

What is everyone else going to be playing?

Awesome, thanks Apples!

So I've got this awesome Runic Talon with the Chaos rune word in it, crazy damage, great stats, lets me whirlwind. But WW doesn't proc the proc abilities, so it seems more useful just for normal attacks. Does anyone have a good build / play style to use that will let me maximize this thing's potential?

Right now I've gone with the Poison/Shadow Master build

20 Tiger's Claw
20 Venom
20 Shadow Master
20 Claw Mastery
All the pre-reqs and 1 point into each finisher.

Quote from Stalker7d7

I've been good and interested in D3 ever since I beat D2 many many years ago. And I was still really excited for it last year. But I am now losing much of my interest in D3, as I have waited too long, and can see that it is not going to match up to the brilliance that D2 once was (before they ruined it with synergies).

Is it just me, or are others losing interest as well?

Synergies made D2 awesome!

Actually, they were cool, imo, but what actually made D2 awesome was the mechanics of the cube + runes. The fact that normal items were worth farming in order to socket in order to put runes in... it gave value to just about anything that dropped. The result was that instead of endless farming for the "one" item, there were many items that could do the trick, though some were still more valuable than others.

D3 seems like it will be a blast, but I'm concerned about the lack of rune-type mechanics. Hopefully the crafting system makes up for it... Having that means of making your own useful items tailored to your character is key.

Quote from apples

Quote from Lt. Venom

Good, I can drink myself into a stupor on Sunday night for my 21st birthday, then be ready to go for the reset on Tuesday.

they dont sell on sundays, unless u want to buy bottles from the bar for 500 each. or maybe its just this crazy southern state i live in that still does this...

That's your state law biting you in the beer.

In california you can sell booze every day of the week from 6 am to midnight. Bars are open until 2 am (but can only sell booze until 1:45 am).

Actually, Hawking only says that it is not necessary for God to have lit the blue touch paper and started the Universe, and says that spontaneous creation is possible in light of the laws of gravity. It doesn't actually preclude the possibility of a God, nor does it mean that something else may have been at play when the universe was created.

Regardless, even this creation theory of hawking's has gravity as the grand creator of the universe - it is not a true spontaneous creation theory, as it does have a cause that led to the effect of the universe's creation. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in M-Theory and Hawking's views of Big Bang gravitational spontaneous generation, but he's not ruling out the possibility of a creator, merely opening a door for the absence of a conscious entity having been one.

Regardless, I hold that a possibly false assumption is all we ever have, and that through conscious knowledge of that possibility, we develop more refined means of putting our beliefs to the test.

The comparison that you make between the chill water of doubt and the warmth of possibly false assumptions sounds more like nihilism than atheism. you're comparing the belief in nothing to the belief in something, while your avowed standpoint is that of someone who, in contrast, has seen nothing to believe in, which is a very different thing.

Edit: Your description of atheist in the above post is excellent however, I want to make sure you know that I saw that!

Quote from proletaria

Quote from kahdrick

I'm of the opinion that answering the question of the origins of the universe will be a great leap towards determining if any God exists, but it may not in fact lead us any closer to the answer. In the absence of hard evidence against it, I choose to believe - operate under the assumption - that some sort of higher power did create our universe. I can't prove it to you, but I do believe that this is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the limited evidence at hand.

I hold the opinion we may come to understand anything about the universe. I hesitate to make idle speculation about what it would mean because I cannot know what all those things might be. What I espcially will not do; however, is believe. I will hypothesize to the best of the evidence presented me, but in the total absence of evidence I will decline the offer to assert anything. Thusly, I see no reason to assert a higher power or a creator/creation of the universe. I simply have no evidence, limited or otherwise upon which to make a reasonable assumption.

I agree wholeheartedly that we may come to understand anything about the universe. That's what's so exciting about it! However, I differ with you in that I see no reason not to make idle speculation. Concoct a theory, test the theory. Speculate, test the speculation. Tomato, tomato (that expression doesn't work well in text at all).

As for your statement that there's a total absence of evidence, I disagree.

1) We know that the universe operates under a limited set of laws.
2) We know that one of these laws is that there is no action without an equal and opposite reaction.
3) We know that there is a conservation of matter in the universe. That is to say, nothing comes from nowhere, and everything comes from somewhere.
4) We know that the universe began with what is commonly known as the "Big Bang Theory" - that all matter in the universe simultaneously erupted from a single point and that the results of that eruption is directly responsible for everything we can observe today.

This information would then lead us to believe that the universe came from somewhere. That before the Big Bang, there was something. I can't say what it is or was, but our understanding of science is fairly clear that the universe did not spontaneously manifest out of nowhere. There has to be a reason that the Big Bang occurred. The existence of an entity, outside of the laws of physics, with the ability to manipulate (or at least create) the realm of physics, is one possible explanation.

Personally, I find that to be a simpler explanation than the Big Crush theory (that the universe repeatedly expands and collapses in on itself and has existed literally forever with no actual origin) - especially in light of recent findings that the universe's expansion is accelerating, which makes any such Big Crush unlikely.

I also find a God theory to be more satisfactory than a "spontaneous generation" theory of the universe, which would violate the 2nd and 3rd points which I raised above.

I will grant, however, that what we actually know about the instant of universal creation is virtually nothing. We know about the time very near to the instant of creation, but not the actual instant. The results of our scientific attempts to see that point will likely surprise us all.

In the light of the incredible advances in technology required to learn concrete data about this moment, the amount of time and treasure that it takes to make these studies, and the scope of human history and curiosity about where we came from, we can hardly discount the value of religious explanations.

God exists because we can't prove otherwise.
God does not exist because we can't prove he does.

But the evidence before us, the scientific likelihood that something created the universe, is quite compelling.

Edit: I'd like to now refer to the instant that the universe was created as Schrödinger's God Box.

Quote from proletaria

I don't think you understand what I said. I have no such claim that the library books have an author or not. My contention is that theorizing via beliefs about the author doesn't help us attain literacy. We can seek the knowledge within those books without making any such claims.

That's fair, but it begs the question: Why did you start this thread? The desire for proof of an author indicates that you do view it as relevant to the scouring of these books for knowledge.

I am inclined to agree that knowing if there is an author and who that author is would be pertinent, as it could grant a great perspective from which the books were written. I offer this: The religious views of the middle ages that the Earth was the center of the universe provided scientists a perspective from which to approach the problem of the motion of the starts, sun, and planets in the sky. Without this initial perspective - as incorrect as it may have been - would the scientists of the day have figured out that we revolve around the sun?

The existence of the theological explanation of the universe provides framework. Science provides evidence. At some points, they agree (Jesus was a real living person), and at some points they don't (Noah built a boat that held two of every creature in the world on it), and in other places, they simply cannot yet find enough evidence to tangibly say whether or not they agree or disagree (where did the universe come from?).

I'm of the opinion that answering the question of the origins of the universe will be a great leap towards determining if any God exists, but it may not in fact lead us any closer to the answer. In the absence of hard evidence against it, I choose to believe - operate under the assumption - that some sort of higher power did create our universe. I can't prove it to you, but I do believe that this is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the limited evidence at hand.

Quote from proletaria

Too bad, you can't avoid it. You're on a computer right now that was designed by knowledge acquired from science, not faith. The personalized god that you're making up and choosing to believe in has nothing at all to do with the evidential sciences of cosmology or biology (evolution). Wether or not there is a god out there, we know the universe works. Supposing one out of faith doesn't help us understand that universe. I can appreciate your desire to know, logic be damned, how it all began, but agin, that doesn't make a bit of diffirence. Religious fanatics are illogical and almost certainly "wrong." Atheists claim nothing to be "wrong," about. You're creating a dichotomy where none exists.

You're making a gross assumption that belief in God is inherently at odds with science and the laws of physics. In fact, Einstein said:

I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.

This is science. We're unraveling the mysteries of the universal library. Perhaps it is God's library. Perhaps it is no one's library. But there is a library.


Maybe our study of it will reveal where it came from, how it was formed, and why it exists. It seems likely that all of these questions will be answered through science. That does not mean that none of them have been answered through religion. We won't know for certain until our studies are sufficiently advanced to know the contents of every single book in the library.

Quote from proletaria

Quote from kahdrick

Okay, this right here is the fundamental problem with the thread. You don't have any concept of what you want people to prove to you. I could ask you to prove to me that a snarflblart exists, and while you may imagine something as a "snarflblart" the fact of the matter is that the word means nothing to me whatsoever. The result is that there isn't a common ground to begin explanation of proof. First we have to establish a line of communication whereby we can understand what one another means when we say "God."

I don't have a personal concept of god, but I do understand the god concepts of most popular religions and deist philosophers. I would have to assume that this is the common ground.

But I have just given three common beliefs of God which are very different in size, scope, and provability. Heck, I even proved one for you! To be fair, the God-meme theory is not common among religious people, but it is provable.

Quote from proletaria

Quote from kahdrick

So knowing what you're asking to have proven to you is paramount to whether you can have a successful conversation about "proof."

I don't think so. When a physicist asks his colleages to explain a new concept they've been working on, they are not animating a picture that is already in his head. They're providing empirical evidence that fits together so as to compose a new picture. It is a composit understanding arrived at by evidence. Were we to need an idea wholly in our heads in order to ask about it and have it explained rationally, I shouldn't think that we would have advanced much in the field of science.

I disagree. Science relies on hypothesis. Namely, I think that X will happen when I do Y. Or, I think that Q exists, and we can find out by doing P. And so forth. Sometimes the results are surprising or contrary to the original hypothesis, but there is always a conjecture that is clearly framed before any inquiry is begun. Here, it appears that you are expecting a single answer to a very vague "prove that God exists." The conjecture of each person offering their proof is different and needs to be understood that way. We have many different hypotheses in this thread, and many different examinations of them. I assume you're attempting to composite them together, but I personally stipulate that we don't actually have enough information to declare any of our experiments to be "conclusive." The lack of evidence, however, is not proof that evidence does not exist somewhere. As Edison said, "I have not failed. I have only found 999 ways that do not work."

Quote from proletaria

Quote from kahdrick

It's important not to take two different people's explanations of God which conflict with one another as evidence that either party is incorrect, just as it's important that everyone discussing this topic does not take your desire for proof of God as an attack on their own belief in one.

Well, there is such a thing as mutual exclusivity, but I do agree not ALL God concepts and religions are mutually exclusive (though a great many are).

Very true, but differing views, in light of a lack of overwhelming evidence, are not necessarily proof of one another's incorrectness.
Let me offer this as well: The laws of nature dictate cause and effect in all things. There is no action which does not have a result, and no results that do not have actions which initiated them. Thus, it is perfectly logical and reasonable to assume that the universe came from somewhere and that some action initiated its creation.

Quote from proletaria

Quote from kahdrick

Agreed, so I'm asking you to tell me what your definition is.

I never tackled that question because I never had to assume there was anything to call god. But, I know the prevaling opinions about the word, so I titled the thread as such to attract people who did have such opinions. You should be asking them, not me. Unless you have missed the full 20+ pages of my posting, you'll realize I haven't got a belief at all, much less a belief of the name "god,"

Man, I miss one day of this thread and it soars to 30+ pages! Holy cow.

Okay, this right here is the fundamental problem with the thread. You don't have any concept of what you want people to prove to you. I could ask you to prove to me that a snarflblart exists, and while you may imagine something as a "snarflblart" the fact of the matter is that the word means nothing to me whatsoever. The result is that there isn't a common ground to begin explanation of proof. First we have to establish a line of communication whereby we can understand what one another means when we say "God."

So try to imagine what a hypothetical God would be. What does it look like, or does it look like anything? Everything? What does it do? Is it a real entity or a construct of our collective psyche? And so forth. I *think* you want us to prove that a physical entity, self-aware and capable of independent thought, with the power to change the universe in ways that defy the laws of physics, exists. But that may not be what God is to all of us.

For example, if I believe that God is a manifestation of the human psyche that serves a function in society of drawing us together and granting us a sense of purpose, the simple proof would be that I believe such a thing exists. God as meme is a self-fulfilling proof.

If I believe that God is a supernatural being that exists beyond the scope of the universe and transcends both the physical and spiritual realms (assuming I believe in a spiritual realm), then the very nature of God would make it unprovable because anything outside the scope of our own physical limitations would be impossible to describe, just as a 1-dimensional object cannot describe a 3-dimensional object with any sort of accuracy. A line cannot define a cube, and man cannot define a God of this nature.

If I believe that God is a physical entity that created the universe in such a way as to exist wholly within and as a part of it, and that the universe's fundamental laws are the exact same laws within which God must function (either because these laws always applied to God and the creation of the universe therefore fell within them, or because - through the act of creating the universe - God willingly subjected Himself to them), then God should be provable through science, and the study of science would literally be the study of proving God.

So knowing what you're asking to have proven to you is paramount to whether you can have a successful conversation about "proof." I should mention that all three of the examples given are things that people actually believe, and one result is that you're going to get (as you can see from this thread) many different and conflicting points of evidence and proof. It's important not to take two different people's explanations of God which conflict with one another as evidence that either party is incorrect, just as it's important that everyone discussing this topic does not take your desire for proof of God as an attack on their own belief in one.

Quote from proletaria

Faith cannot predict things based on the laws of our universe, faith cannot design us a new means of getting basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter. Faith cannot help us to understand new aspects of the universe that we live in. Faith simply asks us to stop using our mind to figure things out and accept an answer we've been given. I'm sorry if you have a soft spot for faith, but don't even think about asserting it's permanent value over science.

You're wrong, actually. All of science is an act of faith. You yourself have said that theories are just that. They are what we currently believe to be true with regards the the laws of the Universe. They key difference, I think, between science and religion is that when science proves a theory to be false, science subsequently adjusts its beliefs to fall in line with the newly discovered facts. But science, even 99.99999999% certain science, still functions on a basis of belief.

Faith, too, does not stop people from working. You're imagining a farmer saying "I have faith that god will make it rain" and then sitting around doing nothing as he starves to death. But that farmer could just have easily said "I have faith in the ability god gave me to build an irrigation ditch" and then he could have successful crops. It's still faith. He could even say "I have faith in my ability to build an irrigation ditch" and not even think about god, but that is still faith.

Quote from proletaria

I really don't care what you believe. Beliefs are not evidential and therefor useless to me. The title of the thread is "prove," your god exists. Not "make me believe," or "tell me what you believe," or anything like that. So, if you have evidence to present me that suggest your god exists, present it, but don't waste your time telling me what you believe. I didn't ask you that.

Again, I disagree. Beliefs are evidential of some things. Sure, a belief is the boogeyman doesn't make the boogeyman a real, tangible, physical object. But a belief in mathematics does make algebra possible. You can't reach out and touch the number i, or even -1; you can't point to something and say, "see that? That thing right there is the square root of negative one apples. And that thing next to it, that's exactly one less than zero apples." But the existence of those concepts - the belief that they are logical and sound, makes many mathematic problems possible to solve and that does have a tangible effect on the universe we live in.

Dismissing both faith and belief out of hand as irrelevant to the discussion does an injustice to the debate as a whole.

Quote from Hiero

Tell you what..... I'll visit this post tomorrow, or rather today, as it's way to late to think. I might edit it.

I look forward to it and I agree. It's sleepy-time!

Quote from Hiero

I'm a Christian. I beg your forgiveness if I seem bad at it.

I'm going to attempt to give you some responses from the perspective of the Jew who Went to Catholic School. I'm pretty bad at that, too. At least we're in good company!

Quote from Hiero

With a topic title like you have, I was ready to descend with disdainful contempt on your thread and condemn it to the flames for approaching a matter such as this with such hostility. Then, I read your post and realized this was a civil discussion reaching for enlightenment, not a thinly veiled attempt at bashing my beliefs like so many I've seen before. Personally, I don't understand why people think it's fun to do that as anyone, in a moment of anger, can portray themselves and others affiliated with them as much less than they really are. But that's beside the point of this post.

Many kudos to you for approaching the topic in kind! I'm quite pleased to find both the level of discourse and the character of the participants to be mature, respectful, and open. D3 fans rock!

Quote from Hiero

I believe because I choose to believe. A corollary to that, depending on your beliefs, believe it or not, is that I've been chosen to believe. Personally, I think everyone's been chosen to believe, some people just haven't chosen to believe. I'd also like to be quite clear in that I believe in the existence of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

Here I was ready to jump on you for the assumption that being chosen to believe led your your choosing to believe, and then - lo and behold - you presented what I think is probably the most profound sentence of your entire post. That everyone is chosen to believe, but not everyone choses to do so.

However, I'm going to throw out two arguments (which are at odds with one another, but in the interest purely of exploring the choice of choosing, I present them both)
1) The old testament clearly states that the Hebrew tribe was chosen by God to be his people. The new testament will later say that this was God choosing to use them as the primary source for spreading His Good Word, and was not a choice that limited forever The Chosen to only be Jews and their descendants, but even in that case it means that no one else is truly chosen to believe until they have been told the Good Word. This would mean that, in fact, not all people are chosen to believe, because not all people have been told the Good Word of God.
2) God presents Himself as fact. No where in the bible does God every ask, tell, or command people to believe in Him. In fact, He is wholly presented as an entity the existence of which cannot be denied. Belief, then, is distilled down to merely knowledge of the existence of God. If you show someone an apple, and then ask if they believe in apples, would be a pretty silly thing to do. Likewise, once someone has been shown God, they can no more chose not to believe in Him than they can chose not to believe in apples. In this argument, it is impossible to choose not to believe once you have been chosen to do so (the assumption being that, in order to know you have been chosen to believe, God has presented himself to you such that you would understand the nature of your choosing).

While these two arguments are at odds with one another to some degree, the both lead to a similar conclusion: Some people are chosen to believe, but not everyone is. This leaves then, in God's plan, space for nonbelievers through no conscious act of the non-believing party. A very simple way to say this would be: It's okay with God if you don't believe in God. Corollary to this, I think most non-believers are perfectly fine with the existence of believers.

Thus, whether or not God exists, everyone should be perfectly happy and secure that God isn't going to get upset with either party, either because He does exist, but is okay with non-believers, or He doesn't exist, and isn't around to care either way.

Quote from Hiero

Now that we've established what I believe and the bare skeleton of why, I'll go in to a bit of detail. Let's have a look at the nature of God, in particular, where He is. If wikipedia can be trusted, (I've looked for a relatively neutral source) then God omnipresent. With the linkage of space and time, as has been proven by science, this means that God is everywhen, also. Let us assume we agree thus far on the nature of God if He exists, which I maintain that He does. Simplified, God is outside outside the bounds of time and space. Forgive me if I assume that you know the difficulty in reaching any sort of evidence in proving in temporal and spatial terms the existence of the one being that is not only beyond those boundaries, but can move through them as you and I would move through water (a weak metaphor, but I hope you get my point).

I'm with you to a degree, but is there any reason you can think of why God would "move through" those boundaries rather than simultaneously existing in all places and times with no need to move at all? I've always imagined that - should a supernatural being of unlimited power exist - God would always be everywhere (and everywhen).

Quote from Hiero

I've heard it claimed before that God can't exist simply because evil exists. This theory irritates me to no end because it oversimplifies. That plaintive voice whining, "How could a God that is good allow this world to be filled with such evil?" is a coward for refusing to dive deeply into the matter see what exactly happened to bring about evil. (For this point I'll speak as if you believe, pray forgive me) Simply put, man was created to love. A part of love is the ability to not love, a choosing to love. We were created to experience all good things, and one of those is obedience. To choose to love by acting not by our own will, but by another's. And so, Eve was tempted, caved, and Adam listened to her and caved, too. It's my belief, and I've seen this belief reflected in others such as C.S. Lewis and Ted Dekkar, that sinning (doing evil things) became much easier after "The Fall of Man." I realize this is vague, and presently I will explain it to the best of my ability.

If you read Genesis, it speaks of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was not God's wish that we choose that fruit, because there's nothing good about evil. He only wanted good things for us, so He gave them to us. Thus we had the knowledge of Good. In the choosing of that Tree, we gained knowledge of Evil, and now that we know it and have it, it's difficult to stop. The paradise of only good was lost, and then we had evil along with the good.

My understanding of the Garden of Eden would be that - prior to eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all acts were performed in innocence and ignorance - neither good nor evil, and that - even after eating of the fruit, any act performed in innocence or ignorance would remain neither good nor evil. What changed in people was the knowledge of intent. We can - since eating the fruit - be good, or be evil. It was a blessing and a curse. The ability to act with moral intent is what we gained from that Tree. Similarly, one could view the punishment of being tossed out of the Garden as an interpretation of the result of knowing that moral acts existed: Adam and Eve simply could not abide a place where all acts were acts of naiveté, nor could such a place abide them.

I don't believe that the Paradise was a place of pure good. Clearly, there was a snake there whose actions were not "good." Rather, I believe that the Paradise was a place where creatures were unable to act with any desire to harm or benefit. It was a place of pure curiosity. I believe that the snake was curious as to what would happen if someone ate from the tree, but I do not believe that a snake such as that would be allowed in the Garden at all if the Garden was a place of pure Good.

Quote from Hiero

That covers some of the points, but that is by no means the entire picture. I'd like to take this opportunity to commend proletaria for asking about this topic without hostility, and, as an aside to give you a bit of background on my character, would like to condemn the condemning of others. Christianity doesn't teach disowning or hatred or redneck ignorance about real issues. It just says to love God, love others, and love yourself. It is surprisingly difficult, though.

Amen brother.

Quote from Nightblaze1

Quote 2: If you research into quantum mechanics, specifically the applications of quantum chemistry and physics you will understand that atoms share certain forms of "attraction" with other specific atoms when certain amounts of energy accommodate for fusion between different elements, when subjugated between the weak and strong nuclear forces of differing nucleons. My point being that, our sun (stars being the producers of elements of the periodic table, heavier elements requiring higher temperatures), over the 4 billion years that the Earth has been around for, has provided its limited amount of energy to "excite" atoms in a way to produce the structure of our Earth and everything inside it, along with the exact specific amount of elements available from other stars within the universe. This means that this universe was not in fact randomly designed, but created with a set structure resulting from the laws of physics in reference to the Big Bang and the positioning of our solar system. It wasn't random, its known as a fond word scientists like to use called: coincidence.

+1 for this also, this is a very concise explanation of current scientific theories.

Adding on to it: The thing we don't know right now is why this specific set of laws governing our physical universe is the set of laws that governs the universe. Very near to the initial instant of the Big Bang (and by this I mean a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond), the laws of physics sort of congealed into the first sub atomic particles of a size that we can measure today, and from that moment onward, all physical interactions in the universe (in so far as we can tell) have been dictated by the same sets of laws and limitations. However, it was just as likely, from what we can tell, that a different set of physical laws would have taken hold, and an entirely different universe would have formed. In fact, this may have happened as well, and may have happened many, many more times, which is what leads to the "Multiverse" theories. If that happened, then we live in a "Bubble Universe" type of multiverse, where there are several universes each with different sets of physical constraints (these are the Type 2 Multiverses in the wikipedia link below).

The more popular theories today, however, tend to do with Type 3 Multiverses (personally I enjoy the concept of a modified Type 3, namely one in which divergent universes can still interact (and indeed may be constantly interacting but the experience of them is distilled by our perceptions of them... We view time linearly; we may view universes as a simple point in a much larger canvas, unaware of - and unable to measure - any motion between the universes). Type 4 is certainly a broad stroke... basically it says that if you can describe something with math, then it is real. This would indicate that, if there is a God, He can be described with a mathematical formula. How brash!

Anyway, here's the wikipedia article on Multiverses; I find it pertinent to the discussion of God's possible existence to know what universe(s) said God may or may not be ruling over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

Quote from proletaria

Quote from kahdrick

There's more to this whole train of thought, but I need to know what you're really describing as the God you want us to prove before we move forward with the discussion from this philosophical direction.

Well, we still haven't even managed to establish wether or not there is a god (by any definition) or not. Although I guess I haven't impressed that issue upon some of the other posters very well (or they've decided to ignore it). =)

Agreed, so I'm asking you to tell me what your definition is. When you say "Prove to me that God exists" what is the thing you're asking me to prove? What is your definition of "God." I think it's safe to say that any and all belief systems have shared practices of determining what a God is and what isn't a God. Ergo, we need to start with knowing what your belief system (since you claim atheism, and not nihilism) would frame as a God before we start to put anything into that framework.

I'll stipulate here that a major trait of beliefs is that people tend to cling to them regardless of evidence, be it real or imagined. Very, very few people truly put their beliefs to the test with an honest and open mind that is willing to accept that the test might show their beliefs to be false. As such, I'm viewing this whole discussion as more of an exercise than a truly ground-breaking God vs. Nogod discussion. Finer minds than mine have debated this point for generations and no unassailable arguments have come from it, on either side.