[libertyminded]

Many previous posters have the right idea. God is something different to many people. Even saying "God" as if there were a singular such thing is ethnocentric. The idea of a singular God arose from the Jews that had been captured, enslaved and scattered all over the middle east in ancient times. In those days everyone acknowledged the existance of everyone elses Gods and accepted the fact that your Gods held sway in you land and their Gods held sway in their lands. The Jews developed the idea that theirs was the only true God and that he was omnipresent because they needed something to unify and comfort them in the face of constant enslavement and relocation.

There are to many logical contradictions inherent in a claim of an all powerful God many of which have been touched on by previous posters.

1. If God is omnipotent, does he also have the ability to strip himself of his omnipotence? (Can God create an object that he cannot destroy?)

2. God cannot both be the creator of all things and yet be omnibenevolent. For if God is the creator of all things that would mean that he was also the creator of all evil, ergo he cannot be omnibenevolent.

3. If nothing comes from nothing, and all things in existance require a creator, then God too must have required a creator of some sort, meaning that God's existance would be reliant upon an even more powerful creator, which is impossible because you don't get anymore powerful then all "all-powerful" (omnipotent) correct?

4. If God is completely just, and he requires us to fulfill some sort of criterea to achieve eternal bliss, and he also loves all of his children equally, then it would follow reasonably that each person would be given an equal oppotunity to fulfill these predetermined criterea aspecially considering that the consequence for failing to fulfill such criterea is eternal torture. Since the majority of people ever to exist on Earth only ever hear (and develop a profound understanding) of their culture's form of religion. Thus, by the cirterea established by most monotheistic religions, pretty much everyone else will suffer in hell for their happenstance.

All in all it seems to me that faith is just a fancy word for gullibility. You believe in that which comforts you most regardless of whatever logical fallicies lie within.