CJ,
Do you know anything about fossils? If so, I would invite you to make an intelligent comment.

Actually Dan, the great majority of fossils do not represent "air breathers" Most of them are aquatic, such as ammonites, molluscs and fish.

Were the ammonites wiped out by the flood of Noah?

If so, why are they and the fish that lived around the same time buried under metres of sedimentary rock, well under the layers that contain the dinosurs. Shouldn't they have been swimming around and lay on top of the dinosaur layer or even within the dino layers?

Dan S etc: << Do you know anything about fossils? >>

Clearly I know a little bit more about them and the techniques by which they are dated than you do. Anybody who tries to use fossil evidence for the biblical flood is either ignorant or a fool, or both. Even besides Bugsy's example, there is much fossil evidence that predates the advent of humans by millions of years.

@ Gordo Pollo: The nuns certainly did not mention Ipsum Esse Subsistens to me, or anything else in Latin that I can recall. The brothers did later but I don’t recall that they used that particular phrase. Nor do I recall being told that:

“God is that being whose essence is identical to His existence. God's essence is to be. Hence, it follows that Ipsum Esse cannot not be. Ipsum Esse (God) is His own to be, and therefore exists necessarily.”

I suspect they never mentioned it because somebody in the class might have asked them to explain it and I don’t think they could have. I have to confess that whenever I’ve encountered something that I don’t understand, such as, “God is that being whose essence is identical to His existence”, I’ve found that putting it in Latin didn’t make it easier to understand though it did make it easier for me to explain why I couldn’t understand it.

I’m sure this will disappoint you but despite my having once (eons ago) got Ds in my Philosophy major, I could not then and still cannot understand what it means to say that essence is identical to existence. I’m category bound, I’m afraid. I’m so naïve as to think that things which are components of something (like essence) and states of being (such as conscious or elated) are, forever, categorically different things and to say that this component is identical to that state remains pure gobbledygook to me.

I know that many people find it just as hard to get their head around what there was before the big bang as it is to understand “God always was and always will be”, and I certainly don’t know what preceded the big bang. But I’m pretty sure that however it can be that God always was should work just as well for “what was there before the big bang too?”

Gordo Polo, Go to any Library and read, there is no evidence Historically or archaeological of any christian God or Jesus ever, outside of forged and fabricated religious cult text, it is all forgery and myth.I don't argue with religious cult members, it's futile, your mind is closed and immersed in a world of contrived primitive superstition and myth.
It is for you who makes ridiculous claims of belief in the supernatural to prove their existence. If the Jews who lived in the time of your imaginary Jew Jesus, refuse to acknowledge his existence why would anyone else?

@ Glen. Your description of God having to exist read something like the Ontological argument and I most certainly do not wish to place being in the same category as essences. Somthing's "existence" is a mere fact and is the least you can really say about it. For Aquinas being or "esse" is a different kettle of fish as it can be understood as an act and as a source of all the perfections we see. Heidegger was on to something similar to this when he spoke about the 'forgetfulness of being' - the innate tendence we have to think in essences and forget the act that grounds them (albeit Heidegger's ontology is as obscure as it gets).

@HFR you have me intrigued. Are you saying that if the Christian God existed we could expect to see archaelogical evidence of said God?? What would He look like so I know how to recognise Him? Perhaps He's in the fossil record swimming over the top of Dan's air-breathers? I think I would have more chance of seeing a yeti or the FSM.