A 21st Century Ontological Argument: does it work.

[Astreja]

Fair Argument, Astreja. But if I recall, Saint Thomas Aquinas answered it like this. Paraphrasing and adapting the archaic language of the Angelic Doctor slightly for our times: "If nothing ever existed, then even now nothing would exist, because nothing produces nothing. But this is impossible because it is absurd. Therefore, it is not true that nothing ever existed. Therefore, we cannot but arrive at the existence of Something - or Someone - that exists Necessarily.

I'm going with something, and that "thing" is "whatever basic substance comprises matter/energy."

I really don't think Atheism has any future, sorry. It's just about people realizing the arguments for Theism are sound and more reasonable than those for Atheism, and when they begin to see again Religion has value and makes life meaningful, they'll come back to God/Jesus.

I am incapable of religious belief. I cannot (and will not) "come back" to something that has registered as fictional in my mind since I was a child. (In other words, I can't come back to a place I never visited in the first place.) I have never possessed religious faith, and at the age of 66 I do not expect this to change.

Christianity has nothing that I want, and a great deal that I do not want. I do not want to live forever, and concepts like substitutionary atonement are utterly ghastly.