In a message dated 10/20/98 4:40:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jrovira@juno.com writes: << <<Alright, Jim, I'm dying to know the punch line. What irrationalities and unfounded assumptions underlie the belief that our universe is likely empty of any divine presence? (I'm unfamiliar with the "universal negative proposition", at least by that name.) -Sean>> Start making arguments against the existence of God and I'll show them to you :) A universal negative is basically the statement, "There is no..." period, whatever the word following may be. There is no Santa Claus, there is no perfect purple Island, whatever. The problem is you virtually have to assert omniscience to make this statement. You CAN say, "there PROBABLY is no..." whatever, but you can't say that **beyond a shadow of a doubt** unless you're omnisicent. So when you're denying the existence of God, well, that's a bit self-defeating. Jim >> are you saying that there definitely is a god??.. because then you would be sounding kinda omniscient there too that there is... ;) ~marisa