Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Sorry, cliffdweller, you'll have to define unnecessary roughness for all the soccer fans.
![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
quote:I'm gonna call unnecessary roughness. It is part of the specialized language of theonerds. It's not part of everyday English conversations. The question was valid, your response unnecessarily snarky (not that I'm not prone to both snarkiness and theonerd-dom myself from time to time).
Originally posted by Gwai:
Ex nihilo is originally Latin, but it's part of the English language now.[/URL]
quote:I realise this, but my point was that it is just as illogical (or counter-intuitive) to say that "being comes from non-being" even with the presence of an agent - even an all-powerful one - as it is to say the same thing in the absence of such an agent. If a magician was asked to cause a rabbit to appear from literally nothing, he would (I assume!) say it's impossible. If that magician was endowed with a billion times more power, the task would still be impossible.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell
My second point is that Christian theism postulates creation ex nihilo, that there was no pre-existing material substance. But that's not quite the same as being coming from non-being ... because we still believe in God who is eternal, existing outside the bounds of space time. He isn't any form of material substance, but still is. Creation comes from God, just without God giving anything material of himself into the act of creation.
quote:I think your problem is that you're taking two different uses of 'ex nihilo' and conflating them.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Who can dispute the argument that "being cannot come from non-being" (which is the same as the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit)? I agree that such a view of the origin of the universe is bizarre, to say the least.
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Sorry, cliffdweller, you'll have to define unnecessary roughness for all the soccer fans.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
quote:Is panentheism something that needs to be avoided?
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
... But then are we not falling back onto pantheism or panentheism?
So is divine creation ex nihilo a rather hypocritical argument?
Perhaps better minds than mine can solve this conundrum?
quote:Wow. I wish I had read this earlier today... right now my brain is mush. But, thanks for posting it. I have to scribble it down on a dirty envelope and re-read it later.
Originally posted by mousethief:
I think it's inaccurate to say that God created the universe (or multiverse if that's what it turns out to be) ex nihilo. Before the creation, there was not nothing. There was God. If you like, God created from nothing but God. But not from nothing.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
quote:I agree, and I certainly do not accept the "universe from nothing" or the eternally existing universe requiring a temporal infinite regress. But I don't think that divine creation ex nihilo is the solution. Divine creation yes (of course! Sorry SusanDoris...), but I cannot see how the introduction of an agent makes the creation of absolute novelty possible. What conceivable mechanism can an agent use to turn absolute nothingness into something? I cannot conceive of it, and if that tells us something about the limitation of my mind, then fine. But then if this counter-intuitive theory is possible, then so is any other. This is why I think that Christian apologists who appeal to creation ex nihilo are being somewhat unfair and inconsistent, and I think Peter Millican's appeal to "that which is beyond human comprehension" is nothing more than playing us Christians at our own game. If apologetics debates were football matches, then I would love to see atheists being thrashed 20 - 0, but only if the game was played fairly by the rules!!
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl
Incidentally, one of the problems with the Krauss-type nothing, is that it seems to be full of stuff, e.g. the laws of physics, or a quantum vacuum, and so on. How is this nothing? Sheer equivocation. And that's not nothing.
quote:I suspect that we are actually living in "God's matrix". In other words, information could be the basis of matter, or matter could actually be information. This is a view that the physicist Anton Zeilinger appears to propose:
By analogy, a composer creates music not "out of" parts of herself but "out of" thoughts and feelings that proceed from her, which she then forms into sounds and rhythms.
quote:Information, in the form of thoughts, exists eternally in the mind of God, and then comes forth to be realised as the universe. That is rather different from the idea of information and power acting on a newly created substance, that has been magicked into existence. Who knows, but maybe if matter is reduced far enough, all that will be found are sets of instructions? Pure speculation, of course, but it makes sense theologically and philosophically (to my mind, at least).
...it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Then the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word".
quote:So done, and thanks.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If you want to change the thread title, that's fine by me.
quote:This post of yours has kept me thinking most of the day, but I'm afraid I haven't managed to write even a half good answer! I think that human knowledge and ingenuity will have managed to take our distant descendants to a new home before Earth's 5 billion years are up, and I wonder if there will still then be some searching for God/god/s.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I agree, and I certainly do not accept the "universe from nothing" or the eternally existing universe requiring a temporal infinite regress...
quote:But you completely miss the point of the argument (of the cosmological God-proof), and hence get your knickers in a twist over something irrelevant. Of course it is true that we do not have the slightest idea how creation could work. Of course it cannot be anything like changes agents impose on matter in nature. Of course the atheist can try to claim this "mystery power" for some part of his own constructs. The point is that if the atheist tries to claim this "mystery power", then the philosophical trap snaps shut. For we know that what wields this "mystery power" cannot be a natural entity, since it must be a necessary existent, so as to not require that same "mystery power" to bring itself about. And, as Aquinas says, this necessary existent we call "God". If however the atheist wisely does not touch the "mystery power", then his cosmology necessarily has a fundamental gap.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If "being cannot come from non-being" is true, then it is also true even if we factor in an agent, such as God. If we argue that God created the universe ex nihilo, then are we not simply falling back on a kind of "God as the mysterious doer of the impossible" type argument, which is really a variant of "God of the gaps"? Of course, we can resort to the idea that we cannot understand how God works, because it is beyond our human comprehension, but the atheist could actually resort to exactly the same type of argument (as Peter Millican does, actually) with regard to the problems of cosmology: "it's counter-intuitive, but our naturally evolved minds are limited..."
quote:It is important to point out that this is false, because it is a common error that is increasingly being voiced by atheists. Whatever may be the true nature of the "quantum vacuum", and whatever the "total sum" over all particles and antiparticles in the universe may yield, zero or anything else, this simply is not nothing. It rather obviously is not nothing now, but it certainly was not nothing either even if there ever was a time when the first "quantum fluctuation" was about to happen but all was still empty. Nothing really means nothing, and that excludes any and all "quantum laws" and "quantum states". If there is nothing, then there is no means for any fluctuation, quantum or otherwise. The nothing in these theological and philosophical arguments is a strict nothing, it is decidedly not an "empty quantum world". It really is misleading to claim that physics has in any way or form come near a description of "something from nothing" in a philosophical sense.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The first is that modern cosmology does provide a description of the formation of all that exists from nothing. Though, it should also be noted that all that is comprises various forms of positive and negative energy ... and though the sums may not be complete (we haven't catalogued the entire contents of the universe afterall), there is a good case to be made for the sum of all the energy in the universe to come up with zero. ie: The universe appeared from nothing, and still is nothing ... just a rather interesting arrangement of nothing.
quote:Exactly.
IngoB: Whatever may be the true nature of the "quantum vacuum", and whatever the "total sum" over all particles and antiparticles in the universe may yield, zero or anything else, this simply is not nothing.
quote:The first blemish on an otherwise mature and snide-free thread.
Originally posted by IngoB
...and hence get your knickers in a twist over something irrelevant.
![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
quote:There will still be some searching, and there will still be many who have found Him.
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
This post of yours has kept me thinking most of the day, but I'm afraid I haven't managed to write even a half good answer! I think that human knowledge and ingenuity will have managed to take our distant descendants to a new home before Earth's 5 billion years are up, and I wonder if there will still then be some searching for God/god/s.
quote:And as EE says, nothing plus added eternal God is also not nothing. Theology, likewise, has not come near to a something from nothing explanation.
It is important to point out that this is false, because it is a common error that is increasingly being voiced by atheists. Whatever may be the true nature of the "quantum vacuum", and whatever the "total sum" over all particles and antiparticles in the universe may yield, zero or anything else, this simply is not nothing... It really is misleading to claim that physics has in any way or form come near a description of "something from nothing" in a philosophical sense.
quote:And this doesn't touch EE's point, either. We can come up with - as AC says - the concept of an eternal, infinite multiverse which has the property of eternally spitting out universes (replete with their own laws) where non existed before, in opposition to the concept of a Necessary being with all the trappings Aquinas decided he must have. Neither would be natural to this universe we find ourselves in and the atheist has wriggled out of your philosophy trap for the simple reason that it's teeth is comprised solely of definitions. You might find the multiverse concept ridiculous, but I find the idea that the creator of the Universe is interested in who I sleep with every bit as bonkers, so we're even.
But you completely miss the point of the argument (of the cosmological God-proof)The point is that if the atheist tries to claim this "mystery power", then the philosophical trap snaps shut. For we know that what wields this "mystery power" cannot be a natural entity.
quote:I'd like to note that the use of philosophical arguments to determine the properties of the physical universe has a very spotty track record.
Originally posted by IngoB:
But you completely miss the point of the argument (of the cosmological God-proof), and hence get your knickers in a twist over something irrelevant. Of course it is true that we do not have the slightest idea how creation could work. Of course it cannot be anything like changes agents impose on matter in nature. Of course the atheist can try to claim this "mystery power" for some part of his own constructs. The point is that if the atheist tries to claim this "mystery power", then the philosophical trap snaps shut.
quote:I was thinking of a mutual finding kinda thing. But yeah.
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
.....and yet others, found by Him.
quote:That is nonsense, and the explanation is entirely straightforward. First, the reason that there is some-natural-thing rather than no-natural-thing is that an existing supernatural entity created the natural universe. Second, the reason why this supernatural entity requires no further causal explanation itself is that it is necessarily existent. That's all. You may be tempted to think that that is a cop-out, but it is not. On one hand, one can compellingly argue that no other causal explanation is possible. On the other hand, "necessarily existent" has many logical consequences, for example that this entity has to be eternal (for if it must be, then there cannot be an instant where it is not).
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And as EE says, nothing plus added eternal God is also not nothing. Theology, likewise, has not come near to a something from nothing explanation.
quote:Aquinas did not "decide" to include this or that feature of the necessary being. He argued tightly from the premise that the necessary being is the ultimate cause to a considerable number of conclusions about what it must be like to fulfil that role. It is of course possible that Aquinas was mistaken in some point. But simply asserting that does not furnish proof. For example, Aquinas demonstrates that the necessay being must be immutable. The multiverse is not immutable. Therefore it cannot be the necessary being. The only way out of this for you is to show that Aquinas was wrong in his demonstration. I think you will find it rather difficult to show that though.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And this doesn't touch EE's point, either. We can come up with - as AC says - the concept of an eternal, infinite multiverse which has the property of eternally spitting out universes (replete with their own laws) where non existed before, in opposition to the concept of a Necessary being with all the trappings Aquinas decided he must have.
quote:No, we are not at all even there. The Christian God who tells you what to do with your genitals is not being demonstrated by these cosmological arguments anyhow. For better or worse, that is a different discussion. All this philosophy can tell us is that the Christian God is compatible with being the ultimate cause of the world, it does not tell us that the Christian God is the ultimate cause of the world.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
Neither would be natural to this universe we find ourselves in and the atheist has wriggled out of your philosophy trap for the simple reason that it's teeth is comprised solely of definitions. You might find the multiverse concept ridiculous, but I find the idea that the creator of the Universe is interested in who I sleep with every bit as bonkers, so we're even.
quote:This is plain false, since as mentioned EE simply misunderstood what the cosmological proof is about. It is not a mechanistic explanation. Nobody is claiming that "God created the world" provides any insight into how God did that, and EE's point that such an act is not like us manipulating matter from one state to another was well known and explicitly discussed by Aquinas (see for example here, Replies to Objections 2 and 3) and probably way back to the Fathers, though I've not bothered tracking that through history. Indeed, this is occasion for the label "omnipotent", that only belongs to God. Perhaps you have wondered what this could mean, other than a kind of collection of all things any natural entity could do. Well, one power beyond all natural entities that God must have is precisely the power to bring some-natural-thing from no-natural-thing, an "infinite" power in the sense that no finite power can do that.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And we end up exactly where EE started, with something coming from not nothing. What we don't have is any clue whether either concept is anything near to what is actually out there.
quote:This is like saying that knowing the integers and subtraction we do not know that zero exists, and that such knowledge of zero might be in the same category as the colour of dragon wings for all we know. "Nothing" is not simply some fantasy state, it is the consequence of mentally subtracting entities from reality until there are zero left. To doubt that we can do that comes rather close to insanity, I would say.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And, as an aside, we don't have any idea if the philosophical concept of nothing pertains to a state that actually exists. The something from nothing question might be in the same category as the colour of dragon wings for all we know.
quote:And the relevance of this note, given that we are not at all doing that, is what precisely?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'd like to note that the use of philosophical arguments to determine the properties of the physical universe has a very spotty track record.
quote:Strictly of course God is the only entity that can never be supernatural. The naturalistic definition of 'natural' is incoherent, and the naturalistic definition of 'supernatural' more so.
Originally posted by IngoB:
First, the reason that there is some-natural-thing rather than no-natural-thing is that an existing supernatural entity created the natural universe.
quote:Why do planets follow circular/elliptical orbits around their stars insted of square ones? We don't have any idea if the philosophical concept of a square orbit pertains to a state that actually exists. The circular/elliptic vs square orbits question might be in the same category as the colour of dragon wings for all we know.
Grokesx: And, as an aside, we don't have any idea if the philosophical concept of nothing pertains to a state that actually exists. The something from nothing question might be in the same category as the colour of dragon wings for all we know.
quote:Ignoring the unnecessarily sneering and supercilious language, I can see your point. However, I referred to Peter Millican - and in a later post on this thread I linked to his attempt to rebut the Kalam Cosmological Argument - and, although he is ostensibly flying the flag for atheism, it is clear from the content of his response to Craig that he is actually proposing an agnostic position, while firmly placing human knowledge within the bounds of a merely pragmatic empiricist epistemology (I am aware that 'atheism' has now largely been redefined to include agnosticism). This position logically cannot rule out the agency of a non-natural "mystery power" (whatever 'non-natural' is supposed to mean). He is saying: "We just do not know. Our minds are incapable of fathoming this aspect of reality." He argues this on the basis that we are mere products of natural evolution, who can only understand that which pertains to our realm of operation (which Dawkins refers to as "Middle World"). Of course, I profoundly disagree with his world view (and I regard his view of human reason as self-refuting, in that we cannot really make any metaphysical statements with any confidence if our minds have evolved for purely utilitarian reasons), but I sympathise with his response to Craig's rather simplistic cosmological argument.
Originally posted by IngoB
But you completely miss the point of the argument (of the cosmological God-proof), and hence get your knickers in a twist over something irrelevant. Of course it is true that we do not have the slightest idea how creation could work. Of course it cannot be anything like changes agents impose on matter in nature. Of course the atheist can try to claim this "mystery power" for some part of his own constructs. The point is that if the atheist tries to claim this "mystery power", then the philosophical trap snaps shut. For we know that what wields this "mystery power" cannot be a natural entity, since it must be a necessary existent, so as to not require that same "mystery power" to bring itself about. And, as Aquinas says, this necessary existent we call "God". If however the atheist wisely does not touch the "mystery power", then his cosmology necessarily has a fundamental gap.
quote:Shorn of the rhetorical flourish, sort of. The consequence of mentally subtracting entities from reality. And dragons wings are the consequence of mentally constructing mythical beings. If anyone wishes me to take the idea of dragons wings being something that may exist in reality seriously, they would need to offer me some details of where they may have been observed, perhaps show me fossilized remains, or a give some other credible account, since the simple act of manipulating abstractions does not ensure that those abstractions have counterparts in the world. The map is not the territory. Although I know you don't agree with that, which in my eyes is just as insane as my doubting the existence of nothing is in yours.
"Nothing" ... is the consequence of mentally subtracting entities from reality until there are zero left.
quote:So this is the theological explanation of something from nothing, which turns out to be something from nothing + God. Apparently I can't mentally subtract the entity of God from reality because of some logical wibbling which looks like a severe case of special pleading, so where does that leave philosophical nothing?
First, the reason that there is some-natural-thing rather than no-natural-thing is that an existing supernatural entity created the natural universe. Second, the reason why this supernatural entity requires no further causal explanation itself is that it is necessarily existent. That's all. You may be tempted to think that that is a cop-out, but it is not. On one hand, one can compellingly argue that no other causal explanation is possible. On the other hand, "necessarily existent" has many logical consequences, for example that this entity has to be eternal (for if it must be, then there cannot be an instant where it is not)
quote:And you know this how? I think my multiverse is at least as immutable as your God. It just sits there for all eternity spitting out every conceivable universe. You could argue that with each new universe it creates it must change a bit, but the same could be said of your God and this universe. Oh, sorry, that's getting into the mechanism, which apparently We Must Not Do. But if the classical idea of God is to be compatible with the Biblical one, the definition of immutable has got to include a fair bit of wiggle room to accommodate the Old Testament smiter and the gentler New Testament creature who Incarnated. Ah, you might say, immutable in theology does not mean unchanging in that naive sense, it means unchanging in his character, will, and covenant promises, blah, blah, blah. And my reply would be, what's good for the goose is good for the gander and we could carry on forever. In fact, I'll stop now because I'm pretty sure I've said this exact same thing before.
For example, Aquinas demonstrates that the necessay being must be immutable. The multiverse is not immutable.
quote:Yes, both dragon wings and nothing are mental constrcuts.
Grokesx: The consequence of mentally subtracting entities from reality. And dragons wings are the consequence of mentally constructing mythical beings.
quote:I'd have thought that an important difference was that nothing has a mathematical representation, zero or the empty set. The vast majority of our current physics is based upon a mathematics that I believe relies upon those as axiomatic concepts. I suppose quantum mechanics or string theory may use some non-classical mathematical group, but I'd be surprised if it's not defined in terms of the classical mathematical concepts.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
My point was that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" might be equivalent to the question, "What colour are dragons' wings?" In other words in could turn out to be a question about the properties of an imaginary entity.
quote:As a matter of interest, what is the answer to the following operation:
Originally posted by Dafyd
I'd have thought that an important difference was that nothing has a mathematical representation, zero or the empty set. The vast majority of our current physics is based upon a mathematics that I believe relies upon those as axiomatic concepts. I suppose quantum mechanics or string theory may use some non-classical mathematical group, but I'd be surprised if it's not defined in terms of the classical mathematical concepts.
quote:0 is only infitesimal if you equate infinity with "a really, really big number". Infinity isn't a really big number. It isn't a number at all (some programming languages will even, quite correctly, return a "NAN" value when you divide by zero - "NAN" meaning Not A Number).
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
As a matter of interest, what is the answer to the following operation:
1/0 = ?
Is it 1 or infinity?
If the answer is 1, then 1/0 = 1/1, which implies that 0=1.
If infinity, then 0 must be an infinitesimal, which is something.
quote:Classical mathematics handles it as follows:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
But I am not a mathematician, so someone can sort me out on this one. At school I picked up the idea that 1/0 = infinity, but I find it hard to believe that I was actually formally taught that.
quote:Really, all numbers are just functions. 1 is to multiplication exactly what 0 is to addition.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Well I think that this just underlines the fact that 'zero' is just a passive state with, by definition, no function. And when it does appear to have a more active role, it produces tautologies. So 3 - 0 = 3 is just another way of saying '3'. Likewise 3 + 0 = 3. And multiplying zeros is just stating 'zero'. Dividing by zero is nonsense.
quote:This is all true, apart from the last sentence. That implies to me that you're missing the point of the doctrine. The doctrine means that there's no kind of stuff that God made creation out of. It doesn't mean that God made creation out of a special kind of stuff called 'nothing'. Because, as you say, that would be nonsensical. Likewise, as you say, the sum total of reality doesn't increase when God creates. But that doesn't mean that God is diminished by whatever amount creation adds up to.
I find it hard to believe that God in His fullness suffered some kind of deprivation before the universe was created. IMO, the sum total of reality did not increase with the appearance of the universe. If that were the case, then what does that say about the nature of God? But that is what creation ex nihilo implies.
quote:<math geek pedant>
Originally posted by agingjb:
If we take the natural numbers as possible answers to the question "how many", then zero is a perfectly good answer, like one, two etc.
quote:Well yes, but it is precisely because zero is no different from the traditional "natural numbers" as an answer to "how many", that I like the convention of starting from 0.
Originally posted by mousethief:
<math geek pedant>
Zero is not a natural number. The natural numbers start at one.
</math geek pedant>
quote:Rather most are highly intuitive, since creation stories abound. This is an important point. The philosophy is largely art for art's sake here. One can indeed read Genesis 1 and 2 and live a life of faith based on that, rather than on the sophisticated analysis.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Millican has the decency and grace to acknowledge that any theory of the ultimate origin of the universe is counter-intuitive.
quote:Not quite, as demonstrated by yourself. We may not know what God does, but we do know that it different from all our manipulations in principle, not just in specifics. If I were to see an alien accelerate his UFO to warp speed, I would also not know how he does that. However, that would be a quite different kind of ignorance. In particular, in the case of the alien I would love to get my hands on the warp engine of his UFO, because I would expect that with sufficient study I will be able to figure out what it does, and eventually to construct one myself. I have no such expectation with regards to God and His creating. This is real insight, it is not invalid just because it is "negative".
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
1. We have no idea how an agent - no matter how powerful - can create anything ex nihilo, because our entire understanding of reality leads us to conclude that power acts on existing materials. I can accept the idea that "God can do it, but we just don't have the capacity to understand it", but that is no answer to Peter Millican's objection.
quote:This is again not quite true. To use an old example (by Aristotle, IIRC): Imagine a foot standing in the sand. Imagine that it does so eternally, there is no time when it did not or will not stand in the sand. Nothing is moving or changing. Nevertheless, you can still understand and say that the foot is causing the footprint in the sand. There is indeed a sequential order here, but one of logic not of time. Given this we can for example say that there never was a time when God had not created the universe. The universe itself has a beginning (at which its time starts) and perhaps an end (at which its time would stop). But it is always present to God in its entirety, and in that sense it is eternal in spite of its finiteness. There is no such thing as a time when God decided to make the universe. Nevertheless, God and His will to create is logically prior to the universe, like the foot is logically prior to the footprint. No God no universe, no foot no footprint.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
2. We have absolutely no idea how an immutable being, not subject to time, can act, since actions involve change, which suggests sequentiality.
quote:Indeed, I hold such a high view of human reason, because I believe that it is in fact where the image and likeness of God can be found in humans. But note that the examples that you give are not of the kind where we do not know or understand. Rather, they are of the kind where we do know and understand, namely that a self-contradictory, illogical claim is being made.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I argued that we can indeed answer these objections, but only if we hold to a high view of human reason, in which we acknowledge that God's omnipotence implies that he cannot do that which even we can understand is inherently irrational.
quote:Non sequitur. A truly illogical statement is only that from "pure" nothing something spontaneously emerges. We know and understand that this cannot be. But that is not the Christian claim about God. Here the claim is merely that God is not working on something to create, rather it is creation from nothing. The nothing there is not "pure" in the sense that there is an entity already, namely God. "Nothing" here indicates that (in a logical sense) there is no other entity God could make use of in order to bring about the world. And while we do not know or understand how God could make something from nothing, we do not know or understand that that is strictly impossible.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If that is the case, then we also need to apply the same rational method to the concept of creation ex nihilo. If we accept that ex nihilo nihil fit - or "only non-being comes from non-being" - is logically axiomatic, then creation ex nihilo lies outside the range of God's omnipotence. This is not being presumptuous, but rather logically consistent.
quote:They are intuitive in broad-brush terms only. But who decides the level of analysis that a theory must attain in order to be acceptable? If only a general explanation is required, one could ask why the infinite regress is not acceptable, because a simple common sense intuition would say: "well the universe is here and, as far as we know, it has been around for an extremely long time, so why not forever?" And we don't ask too many questions about the difficulties that an infinite regress poses.
Originally posted by IngoB
quote:Rather most are highly intuitive, since creation stories abound. This is an important point. The philosophy is largely art for art's sake here. One can indeed read Genesis 1 and 2 and live a life of faith based on that, rather than on the sophisticated analysis.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Millican has the decency and grace to acknowledge that any theory of the ultimate origin of the universe is counter-intuitive.
quote:I'm afraid I don't see what your objection is. I have acknowledged that we cannot understand how God could create anything ex nihilo, and you have simply confirmed that point. But this was not my argument. My contention is that we cannot use an argument from ignorance as a rebuttal of another argument from ignorance. "God of the gaps" does not refute "naturalism of the gaps". The appeal to mystery is a non-explanation. It may be justifiable, on the basis that our minds are obviously finite. It may be logical. It may be necessary. But it cannot refute the same type of argument dressed in the clothes of a different philosophy.
quote:Not quite, as demonstrated by yourself. We may not know what God does, but we do know that it different from all our manipulations in principle, not just in specifics. If I were to see an alien accelerate his UFO to warp speed, I would also not know how he does that. However, that would be a quite different kind of ignorance. In particular, in the case of the alien I would love to get my hands on the warp engine of his UFO, because I would expect that with sufficient study I will be able to figure out what it does, and eventually to construct one myself. I have no such expectation with regards to God and His creating. This is real insight, it is not invalid just because it is "negative".
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
1. We have no idea how an agent - no matter how powerful - can create anything ex nihilo, because our entire understanding of reality leads us to conclude that power acts on existing materials. I can accept the idea that "God can do it, but we just don't have the capacity to understand it", but that is no answer to Peter Millican's objection.
quote:Well, I take your point, even though it's a very poor analogy, given that the concept of 'footprint' has absolutely no meaning when it has a foot stuck eternally in it (a footprint being the print of the foot, when the foot has been removed, such that we can discern the representation of a foot in it, in the same way that a print on a sheet of paper run through a letterpress is only, by definition, a print when the block has been removed. But then I suppose you would then talk about a mere identation, although even that seems rather redundant, if it can never be distinct from that which caused it. But, hey, let's not be slaves to poor metaphors). But it's interesting that you defend your position with recourse to logic, and yet seem strangely reluctant to exalt reason in the same way with regard to the concept of creation ex nihilo - despite the following comment...
Imagine a foot standing in the sand. Imagine that it does so eternally, there is no time when it did not or will not stand in the sand. Nothing is moving or changing. Nevertheless, you can still understand and say that the foot is causing the footprint in the sand. There is indeed a sequential order here, but one of logic not of time. Given this we can for example say that there never was a time when God had not created the universe. The universe itself has a beginning (at which its time starts) and perhaps an end (at which its time would stop). But it is always present to God in its entirety, and in that sense it is eternal in spite of its finiteness. There is no such thing as a time when God decided to make the universe. Nevertheless, God and His will to create is logically prior to the universe, like the foot is logically prior to the footprint. No God no universe, no foot no footprint.
quote:Then perhaps you will be so good as to explain how an agent can create absolute novelty - i.e. without changing or manipulating something already in existence. Note: a general reference to omnipotence is not an explanation of the required mechanism.
Indeed, I hold such a high view of human reason, because I believe that it is in fact where the image and likeness of God can be found in humans. But note that the examples that you give are not of the kind where we do not know or understand. Rather, they are of the kind where we do know and understand, namely that a self-contradictory, illogical claim is being made.
quote:Firstly, you refer to "the Christian claim about God". This should be "a Christian claim about God". You do not speak on behalf of the whole Church.
Non sequitur. A truly illogical statement is only that from "pure" nothing something spontaneously emerges. We know and understand that this cannot be. But that is not the Christian claim about God. Here the claim is merely that God is not working on something to create, rather it is creation from nothing. The nothing there is not "pure" in the sense that there is an entity already, namely God. "Nothing" here indicates that (in a logical sense) there is no other entity God could make use of in order to bring about the world. And while we do not know or understand how God could make something from nothing, we do not know or understand that that is strictly impossible.
The problem with "something from nothing" is the lack of causal reference. If there is nothing, then we cannot attribute the emergence of something to anything, not even to chance (because also chance requires something to operate on). That's illogical. But by introducing God, we do have an entity to attach the causal reference to. The power used may well remain beyond our understanding in a "know-how" sense, but not in a "logical" sense.
quote:Obviously I pick up on this, since I keep discussing matters at this level as well. My point was that we are not in the situation of quantum mechanics here. It is not that we have some counter-intuitive rules, which we must follow to the bitter or sweet end because that's all we have. Rather, we have an intuitive grasp of the "solution", and it is then a fairly high level intellectual analysis which both finds problems with this fundamental intuition and perhaps counter-intuitive solutions to them.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I agree that the general idea of a creation with a Creator is a common sense position, and one to which I certainly subscribe (I don't quite know how it's possible to be a Christian believer without affirming God as the Creator of the universe), but I was using the term 'counter-intuitive' on a different level. I'm a bit surprised you didn't pick up on that.
quote:And you continue to be plain wrong about that. It is simply not the case that the theological claim is a "pure mystery" one, just because it is not a mechanistic explanation. Until you get that point, this discussion is stuck. To reiterate, the theological claim specifies both what sort of agent must be responsible for creation and what category of action creation is. It does not establish some kind of "engineering" insight however, and it is mostly testable in a "negative" sense (rejecting candidates for agent or action). I gave you an example previously by comparing warp drive technology with creation - we expect that we could reverse-engineer the former, but not the latter. This is a real statement of knowledge about creation, even if you would like to have grander insight. The atheists do not have access to that level of insight (or at least they would have to really face the theological arguments if they tried to claim such insight, and that they rarely do). They really have to make a "pure mystery" appeal, or as they usually call it, they must appeal to a "brute fact". The theological claim is not a "brute fact" claim, it does have serious and accessible intellectual content, even if it is not the sort of content that you would like to have.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
My contention is that we cannot use an argument from ignorance as a rebuttal of another argument from ignorance. "God of the gaps" does not refute "naturalism of the gaps". The appeal to mystery is a non-explanation. It may be justifiable, on the basis that our minds are obviously finite. It may be logical. It may be necessary. But it cannot refute the same type of argument dressed in the clothes of a different philosophy.
quote:It is an excellent analogy and your problems with it are moot. The term "footprint" here is a shorthand for the disturbance of the sand from where it would have been without the foot, not some visual percept.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Well, I take your point, even though it's a very poor analogy, given that the concept of 'footprint' has absolutely no meaning when it has a foot stuck eternally in it (a footprint being the print of the foot, when the foot has been removed, such that we can discern the representation of a foot in it, in the same way that a print on a sheet of paper run through a letterpress is only, by definition, a print when the block has been removed.
quote:First, I do not need to explain this. The theological argument is one of existence, not of mechanism. It declares what has to be the case, not how it works. You cannot refute an existence argument by the lack of mechanism. Second, to the contrary, this is a key way in which omnipotence differs from "superman-potence". Omnipotence is not simply the collection of all powers any natural agent could potentially possess. It literally means all powers that are possible, including those which we do not expect any natural agent to have but which are not therefore impossible in principle.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Then perhaps you will be so good as to explain how an agent can create absolute novelty - i.e. without changing or manipulating something already in existence. Note: a general reference to omnipotence is not an explanation of the required mechanism.
quote:I will do as I please on that matter. I do not believe in the theory that there are multiple legitimate Christianities and Churches. I believe there is one Christianity and one Church, and a lot of heretics and schismatics, as well as non-Christians of course. If your point is that the one Christianity and Church has not officially decided on this matter, then I will take it to a degree. It would take more effort than I'm willing to invest to determine with precision how far one can deviate from the basically Thomistic picture I've painted without falling afoul of the magisterium.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Firstly, you refer to "the Christian claim about God". This should be "a Christian claim about God". You do not speak on behalf of the whole Church.
quote:I'm not making any category error, and God is the material, formal, efficient and final cause of everything, hence the 'causal reference' of creation in every possible manner.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Secondly, you are making a category error. You say that we can attach the causal reference to God. But 'causal reference' is a sloppy phrase, because, as I am sure you know, there are different types of causes. We need to identify what kind of causation we are talking about.
quote:Again, you confuse mechanism with existence. It is an entirely valid causal statement to say that you made this loaf of bread. From this we can conclude that you have the ability to bake. That is true insight, even if we do not have the foggiest what "baking" entails in terms of the required manipulations. Compare this to the "brute fact" claim that "the bread just exists". Clearly this provides less information and has no causal character. For example, if I find a freshly baked bread in my kitchen, I might ask my wife if you have dropped by, since you are a known causal source of bread. According to the "brute fact" theory, I would have no reason to ask this question.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
To say "I don't know where that loaf of bread came from, but I have an explanation which is simply: EE made it, but I don't know how, but if I impute to him a huge amount of ability, then that counts as the valid explanation of the loaf's origin". Well, of course, it does not, because EE is the agent, but the agent of himself cannot constitute the cause, because the cause has to be a composite of both the agent and the means.
quote:This is plain and obvious nonsense, which refutes itself. The chisel is an instrumental cause here, but of course we can say meaningfully that the sculptor caused the statue, even if we know nothing about the chisel or any other artistic means employed by the sculptor.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
We cannot say, for example, that the sculptor caused the statue. What we say is the sculptor, along with his chisel acting on the stone, caused the statue. Take away the chisel and the stone and logically we have no cause.
quote:This is besides the point. Whether matter is "real stuff" or just some Matrix-like projection, it is not nothing, and hence it cannot arise from nothing by itself.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
For all we know, the universe could be nothing more than the realisation of God's thoughts. This information could be the 'stuff' that the universe is made of, and therefore God did not need to create any matter ex nihilo or work on pre-existing matter.
quote:To add to what IngoB says, the whole point of the argument is that creation just cannot involve any kind of mechanism. Mechanism is a matter of like changing something else like itself. Creation is a case of one thing that is totally unlike anything else (God) bringing it about that there is something there where otherwise there would not have been anywhere there.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:First, I do not need to explain this. The theological argument is one of existence, not of mechanism. It declares what has to be the case, not how it works. You cannot refute an existence argument by the lack of mechanism.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Then perhaps you will be so good as to explain how an agent can create absolute novelty - i.e. without changing or manipulating something already in existence. Note: a general reference to omnipotence is not an explanation of the required mechanism.
quote:With this I'd disagree. There are obvious powers that I as a finite material created agent have that God doesn't have (ignoring the incarnation). God cannot use muscular power. Omnipotence doesn't mean that God has powers like created agents but more of them. Between God and creatures there is no similarity without greater dissimilarity. Creaturely powers all operate according to a category in which agent and cause are of the same nature - physical powers operate because both agent and cause are physical. No such nature is shared between God and creature. But nevertheless God is said to be omnipotent because God can instantiate any possible coherent state of affairs.
Second, to the contrary, this is a key way in which omnipotence differs from "superman-potence". Omnipotence is not simply the collection of all powers any natural agent could potentially possess. It literally means all powers that are possible, including those which we do not expect any natural agent to have but which are not therefore impossible in principle.
quote:Again, creation is not an effect with a cause in any sense in which events have created causes. To say God is the material cause of creation is to say creation is made out of God. Which is nonsense. One can just about say God is the formal cause of creation, in that all created perfections are imitations of Gods perfection - but that's stretching things to breaking point. Efficient causation is again stretching - EE's problem is that he's trying to apply the logic of created efficient causation to creation and then declaring that it doesn't work. Which it doesn't, but it's not as if it ought to work. Final causation is probably fairly sound, with the usual caveats.
quote:I'm not making any category error, and God is the material, formal, efficient and final cause of everything, hence the 'causal reference' of creation in every possible manner.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Secondly, you are making a category error. You say that we can attach the causal reference to God. But 'causal reference' is a sloppy phrase, because, as I am sure you know, there are different types of causes. We need to identify what kind of causation we are talking about.
quote:I'm pretty sure that if we can understand something it can't be how God created the universe. (As I say in response to IngoB, the objection to claiming that the universe is self-creating isn't that we don't understand how it happened. It's that we think we do understand and it can't happen.)
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
As a matter of fact, maybe we can understand how God created the universe. W Hyatt above has given us a pretty good clue (and no, I haven't suddenly converted to Swedenborgianism). Do we actually know what the universe is made of? Do we actually really know what matter is? Have we got to the deepest root of matter? For all we know, the universe could be nothing more than the realisation of God's thoughts. This information could be the 'stuff' that the universe is made of, and therefore God did not need to create any matter ex nihilo or work on pre-existing matter.
quote:I would argue that God can use muscular power if He wants to, for example, He could command the muscles in my body in such a way as to type out this sentence. Or he could make a body with muscles and control that directly (not quite what He did with Jesus, of course). And there is a sense in which my typing out this sentence, and hence my usage of muscles, is just being an instrumental cause of God's will. I would argue that in a like manner indeed omnipotence does include all creaturely powers, since God can make use of these powers as He pleases, even though they are "instrumental" powers. It's a bit like me saying that I can fly, if I were always running around with a jetpack strapped to my back. It is true that it is not part of my nature that I can fly, but it is also true that I can get airborne whenever I wish. The whimsical point about having the jetpack strapped to my back always is actually crucial. Omnipotence is not like having to go to the airport and boarding a plane first. Instrumental causes may be separable from God in an intellectual sense, but not in the sense that they can avoid being at His service (unless He allows that to be the case, as with us).
Originally posted by Dafyd:
With this I'd disagree. There are obvious powers that I as a finite material created agent have that God doesn't have (ignoring the incarnation). God cannot use muscular power. Omnipotence doesn't mean that God has powers like created agents but more of them. ... But nevertheless God is said to be omnipotent because God can instantiate any possible coherent state of affairs.
quote:OK, the "material cause" bit was sloppy if understood in the usual fashion. I mean it in the sense that the existence of matter as such (regardless of the form it takes, "primary matter" if you like) is due to God. I do not mean that stuff is made out of God, but that the underlying stuffness of all stuff is from God. But otherwise I think you are overstating your case. The Aristotelian classes of causes themselves generalise quite well to God's act of creation. Basically they are the right sort of abstraction, whereas EE is using the wrong sort of abstraction, but both from the same kind of concrete human acts of crafting.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
To say God is the material cause of creation is to say creation is made out of God. Which is nonsense. One can just about say God is the formal cause of creation, in that all created perfections are imitations of Gods perfection - but that's stretching things to breaking point. Efficient causation is again stretching - EE's problem is that he's trying to apply the logic of created efficient causation to creation and then declaring that it doesn't work. Which it doesn't, but it's not as if it ought to work. Final causation is probably fairly sound, with the usual caveats.
quote:Fair enough, but then we should be agnostic about creatio ex nihilo.
Originally posted by IngoB
Obviously I pick up on this, since I keep discussing matters at this level as well. My point was that we are not in the situation of quantum mechanics here. It is not that we have some counter-intuitive rules, which we must follow to the bitter or sweet end because that's all we have. Rather, we have an intuitive grasp of the "solution", and it is then a fairly high level intellectual analysis which both finds problems with this fundamental intuition and perhaps counter-intuitive solutions to them.
In consequence, if some atheist complains that he "doesn't get it", one has to seriously ask whether that needs addressing at the level of intellectual analysis or not. There is a certain indeterminacy to all philosophy: one can argue the toss out of everything, and the difference between sophistry and philosophy tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps it is more important to first somehow communicate the fundamental intuition about a Creator.
quote:I respect the honesty of this explanation. I don't agree with it, of course, but then again, the looseness with which the word 'Christian' is used frustrates me as much as (I suspect) it frustrates you. It's much better when people "nail their colours to the mast", I suppose.
quote:I will do as I please on that matter. I do not believe in the theory that there are multiple legitimate Christianities and Churches. I believe there is one Christianity and one Church, and a lot of heretics and schismatics, as well as non-Christians of course. If your point is that the one Christianity and Church has not officially decided on this matter, then I will take it to a degree. It would take more effort than I'm willing to invest to determine with precision how far one can deviate from the basically Thomistic picture I've painted without falling afoul of the magisterium.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Firstly, you refer to "the Christian claim about God". This should be "a Christian claim about God". You do not speak on behalf of the whole Church.
quote:The point I was making concerns the idea of "mere agent". The general "God of the gaps" argument is that "God as mere agent - albeit all-wise and omnipotent agent" is posited as the explanation for phenomena for which we do not possess a natural explanation, or for which the natural explanation is highly improbable. These explanations (which some people may regard as non-explanations, and, in fact, question begging assertions) may refer to God as the 'cause' of the particular phenomena in question. Now I can accept that the term 'cause' is crudely used correctly in this context. Unfortunately, however, any question begging 'gaps' explanation can be claimed as a 'cause' according to this meaning. In theories of abiogenesis, for example, nature can be cited as the 'cause' of life, even if the evidence for the relevant mechanism(s) by which organic compounds are synthesised is highly tendentious and speculative. We can say that "we do not really know how life originated, but we do argue that nature is the cause of it." In the absence of a plausible mechanism, that statement is intellectually vacuous, even if it possesses a certain logic, unless, of course, the philosophy of naturalism has been proven to be correct (which would, of course, require circular reasoning).
I'm not making any category error, and God is the material, formal, efficient and final cause of everything, hence the 'causal reference' of creation in every possible manner.
quote:Of course, it cannot arise from nothing by itself. I never said it could! I think you're missing the point. I have no agenda to support Krauss' argument - quite the contrary. I certainly don't dispute the claim that God created the universe. What I dispute is the assumption that it must have involved absolute novelty, or creation ex nihilo.
This is besides the point. Whether matter is "real stuff" or just some Matrix-like projection, it is not nothing, and hence it cannot arise from nothing by itself.
quote:You've dropped the ball there, mousethief. If multiplication is the inverse of division, as you are assuming throughout, and if "1/0=n" is the initial assumption for the argument, then clearly "0*n=1", not zero. Whereupon you end with "1=1", a correct equation. If you have trouble seeing this, replace '0' by 'epsilon' throughout your post, and consider it to be a small positive number with the results being true in a limit sense: epsilon->0. The false equation arises because you are applying two contradictory assumption. Namely, you are using the assumption that "anything multiplied by zero is zero", though this is false by your initial assumption under the rules of algebra, and indeed false if we allow "anything" to include infinity. 1/0=infinity is not "nonsense" then. The actual problem is rather the indeterminacy of these not-quite-a-numbers, e.g., 2/0=infinity is also "true" in the same way, as is 1/0=-infinity (assuming the limit sense of dividing by a negative number with decreasing absolute value).
Originally posted by mousethief:
Say 1/0 = n for some n.
...
On the right, 0*n is 0
quote:Yeah like evidence man - proper evidence that points only in one direction rather than being supportive of multiple contradictory explanations. I wish there was - but it always comes back to donning the blinkers.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In consequence, if some atheist complains that he "doesn't get it", one has to seriously ask whether that needs addressing at the level of intellectual analysis or not. There is a certain indeterminacy to all philosophy: one can argue the toss out of everything, and the difference between sophistry and philosophy tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps it is more important to first somehow communicate the fundamental intuition about a Creator.
quote:Let's make this clear: there is no good analogy between the existence of the universe / multiverse and the origin of life. They are completely different arguments.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Unfortunately, however, any question begging 'gaps' explanation can be claimed as a 'cause' according to this meaning. In theories of abiogenesis, for example, nature can be cited as the 'cause' of life, even if the evidence for the relevant mechanism(s) by which organic compounds are synthesised is highly tendentious and speculative. We can say that "we do not really know how life originated, but we do argue that nature is the cause of it." In the absence of a plausible mechanism, that statement is intellectually vacuous, even if it possesses a certain logic, unless, of course, the philosophy of naturalism has been proven to be correct (which would, of course, require circular reasoning).
quote:No, it is not stating anything about the means of creation.
Now I suppose that one could argue - particularly with regard to the question of the origin of the cosmos - that we can proceed to the "cause of God as mere agent" by a process of falsification. Even if that is the case, we cannot conclude that God created the universe ex nihilo, because that is going beyond the bare statement of God as creator, and stating something about the means of creation.
quote:Because the process of elimination that leads us to suppose the creator must be without time and without space also leads us to suppose that the creator must be without matter or energy. We don't know what God is; we do know what matter is and therefore we know nothing made of matter could possibly be God.
If God is affirmed as mere agent, then, for all we know, he could have used eternally pre-existing matter. Why not? Who are we to say that God does not possess some infinitely large repository of matter as part of His being, and that He drew on this resource to fashion the universe?
quote:Counterintuitive is not the same as logically impossible.
Both ideas are counter-intuitive, and the latter only appears not to be so, because the impossible scenario is juxtaposed to an omnipotent being.
quote:Why do you think your suggestion
I certainly don't dispute the claim that God created the universe. What I dispute is the assumption that it must have involved absolute novelty, or creation ex nihilo.
quote:doesn't count as creation ex nihilo?
For all we know, the universe could be nothing more than the realisation of God's thoughts. This information could be the 'stuff' that the universe is made of, and therefore God did not need to create any matter ex nihilo or work on pre-existing matter.
quote:No, we shouldn't. Just like we shouldn't be agnostic about General Relativity, just because people can use a Sat Nav intuitively without understanding that the GPS employs GR corrections.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Fair enough, but then we should be agnostic about creatio ex nihilo.
quote:This is not quite true. Again, much like the typical existence proofs in mathematics, these metaphysical ones attach conditions. Most entities simply will not work as a Creator. Basically, we have a fairly lengthy check list that will eliminate most contenders. But indeed, not all. It is entirely true that other gods than the specifically Christian one would work, as long as they have the right features.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If we really have no idea how God created the universe, then the pantheist or panentheist (or the Mormon) has as much right to assert his claim as the one who bandies around the confusing phrase ex nihilo.
quote:But this is not what the metaphysical arguments are like. They would be more like saying "we do not really know how life originated, but we do know that the presence of underwater volcanic vents was essential and necessary for it coming about." That does not give you a mechanism for creating life from non-life. But it gives you a sine qua non condition: no volcanic vents, no life. Of course, since you are comparing this to a physical process (probably...), it is true that you have a better chance of finding a mechanism there. You can ask what sort of mechanism relies fundamentally on the presence of volcanic vents, and if you know your physics and chemistry, you may be able to make an inspired guess. This is not the case with creation, because there is knowledge context for that. Nevertheless, the conditions on a God who is claimed to function as a Creator are both meaningful and surprisingly numerous.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
We can say that "we do not really know how life originated, but we do argue that nature is the cause of it." In the absence of a plausible mechanism, that statement is intellectually vacuous, even if it possesses a certain logic, unless, of course, the philosophy of naturalism has been proven to be correct (which would, of course, require circular reasoning).
quote:It is not saying something about the means of creation, but about its mode. We know that there cannot be any pre-existing matter, because then we would have to ask why there is pre-existing matter, rather than nothing. And this would lead us to declaring a "real God", who created pre-existing matter from nothing, whereas the god shaping this matter would be revealed as merely a powerful creature, a demiurge.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Even if that is the case, we cannot conclude that God created the universe ex nihilo, because that is going beyond the bare statement of God as creator, and stating something about the means of creation. If God is affirmed as mere agent, then, for all we know, he could have used eternally pre-existing matter. Why not?
quote:God cannot have any parts, because parts require causal explanation and we only call the ultimate cause God.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Who are we to say that God does not possess some infinitely large repository of matter as part of His being, and that He drew on this resource to fashion the universe?
quote:It is irrelevant of what substance the purported matter is. Anything that is contingent or comes into being requires a cause. You are proposing a Platonic demiurge, but that is not God. We can ask both of your "primary matter" and your demiurge why they exist, for they clearly are not necessarily existent: they can be told apart, so something somehow differentiated them. If it hadn't, then they wouldn't be different, so something existing logically prior and separated them into two beings. That something would be a candidate for the Creator, they are not.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Or perhaps this substance was something other than matter? Who are we to say that God's creative work is not limited to the kind of activity we would associate with a craftsman?
quote:A proof of existence does not require the specification of a mechanism in order to be meaningful. For example, when Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discovered pulsars, they demonstrated their existence by observation and defined these objects by their characteristics. But they did not know the mechanism behind their discovery, they did not know what made these signals (they even speculated about aliens). Thomas Gold and Franco Pacini soon after suggested the now accepted mechanism (rotating neutron stars). But it is nonsense to say that until the theory of Gold & Pacini, pulsars were illogical non-entities. Something out there was making these specific radio signals, and to that the name "pulsar" was being given. In our case, the means are metaphysical rather than (radio)astronomical. Consequently, the resulting conditions on the existence of God are also metaphysical: God has to be in this or that way in order to function as Creator. But these are logically sound claims with meaningful content, they are not lunatic ravings.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
These objections can be rebutted, but only by recourse to the principle that God's omnipotence does not allow Him to do what is logically impossible. If that is the case, then creatio ex nihilo falls under the same prohibition. But apparently, so I am told, this does not apply if God is introduced as the agent, who is also all-powerful!
quote:You are simply wrong about this. The logic here is not at all: God is omnipotent, therefore He can create from nothing, which explains everything. That is just not the flow of argument. Rather, the argument "traces back" natural causation (not temporally by the way, but in the sense of "deeper" causes) and notes that this cannot go on forever. But the only way a "stopping point" can exist is if there is an uncaused cause, a necessary existent that requires no cause itself because it must be. This is the logical conclusion. We then name this entity "God". This naming is justified by deducing properties that an uncaused cause must have, and noting that they are compatible with the usual claims about God. One of these compatible claims is omnipotence, and then we finally can conclude that omnipotence must include the ability to create something from nothing.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
We have no idea how something can spontaneously pop into existence. We also have no idea how an agent - no matter how powerful - can cause something to pop into existence without manipulating pre-existing material, in other words, create absolute novelty. Both ideas are counter-intuitive, and the latter only appears not to be so, because the impossible scenario is juxtaposed to an omnipotent being. This is intellectual sleight of hand. It is as if the mere presence of this being somehow facilitates the logically impossible to occur. We don't have the slightest inkling as to how He could pull this off. And yet, despite this, we refuse to allow that scenario to be falsified, whereas other equally illogical scenarios are judged to be falsified.
quote:Fine, but that is non-Christian.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I certainly don't dispute the claim that God created the universe. What I dispute is the assumption that it must have involved absolute novelty, or creation ex nihilo.
quote:More accurately, there is no way that I can make it into that for you, no matter how convinced I am of its factual validity. The atheist clamour for empirical evidence is justified in this one sense: only where empirical evidence is clear can a hostile mind be overcome. The atheists are wrong, indeed ridiculous, in claiming that this is the only source of truth. But they are right in realising that it is the only reliable combative source of truth. If you aim to beat someone into intellectual submission, then bring the club of empirical evidence.
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
It doesn't matter - move on. Believe in a deity or deities if you wish, just don't pretend that baseless theorising turns belief into knowledge - it doesn't.
quote:Sorry to tangentify, but can you unpack this? Why do parts require causal explanation? And even if they did, why couldn't their cause be God himself?
Originally posted by IngoB:
God cannot have any parts, because parts require causal explanation and we only call the ultimate cause God.
quote:No, they are not different arguments at all.
Originally posted by Dafyd
Let's make this clear: there is no good analogy between the existence of the universe / multiverse and the origin of life. They are completely different arguments.
Abiogenesis has exactly what is lacking in the origin of the universe: a prior state. It is not intellectually vacuous at all to say that 'I travelled from London to Paris' even if I haven't told you a route. The problem with the existence of the universe is as if someone said 'I travelled from nowhere in particular to Paris'. But nowhere in particular isn't a place. It's a completely different problem.
quote:Oh yes it is! Because the concept of creatio ex nihilo excludes other explanations, such as creatio ex materia and creatio ex deo. Therefore it is making a general statement about the kind of approach God supposedly took when embarking on the creation of the universe. All three positions are unfathomable, which means that we cannot assume that one must be true and the other two (and any others not listed) false.
No, it is not stating anything about the means of creation.
quote:What an extraordinary statement! Do we know what matter is? Have you delved to the furthest depths of matter, fully assured that you can go no further?
Because the process of elimination that leads us to suppose the creator must be without time and without space also leads us to suppose that the creator must be without matter or energy. We don't know what God is; we do know what matter is and therefore we know nothing made of matter could possibly be God.
quote:I am well aware of that. But to prove that you are not just playing a semantic game with me, please give me an example of something that is logically possible, yet counterintuitive.
Counterintuitive is not the same as logically impossible.
quote:You say that information is not made of anything, but you are assuming a materialistic position. Thoughts are still something. And thoughts exist eternally in the mind of God, and then can be realised as a series of active instructions that define the nature of reality.
Why do you think your suggestion
quote:doesn't count as creation ex nihilo?
For all we know, the universe could be nothing more than the realisation of God's thoughts. This information could be the 'stuff' that the universe is made of, and therefore God did not need to create any matter ex nihilo or work on pre-existing matter.
God's thoughts aren't made of pre-existing matter. Nor is information made of anything. But do you reject the term 'ex nihilo' for this?
quote:This can be argued in a number of ways, see here. I stated one of Aquinas' arguments in reverse, perhaps it is clearer how he said it "Thirdly, because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. But God is uncaused, as shown above (Question 2, Article 3), since He is the first efficient cause." So if you can meaningfully differentiate between two entities, say your heart and your lung, but they nevertheless form parts of a unity, your body, then there must be a cause for their being so put together, in this case the biological processes of cell differentiation that shaped your body out of the zygote. But there cannot be any cause that "puts together" the First Cause, by virtue of it being first.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Sorry to tangentify, but can you unpack this? Why do parts require causal explanation? And even if they did, why couldn't their cause be God himself?
quote:That's kinda what I was thinking. The whole "If there are parts there must be something outside them that unites them" thing leaves me cold. Applying analogies like that to God is a fool's errand.
Originally posted by IngoB:
And of course, we have thereby argued our way to the processions in God. Indeed, there are three "parts" in God that are each nothing less than God and that are intrinsic to what God being God is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
quote:I don't think I've made the point clear to you.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:No, they are not different arguments at all.
Originally posted by Dafyd
Let's make this clear: there is no good analogy between the existence of the universe / multiverse and the origin of life. They are completely different arguments.
Abiogenesis has exactly what is lacking in the origin of the universe: a prior state. It is not intellectually vacuous at all to say that 'I travelled from London to Paris' even if I haven't told you a route. The problem with the existence of the universe is as if someone said 'I travelled from nowhere in particular to Paris'. But nowhere in particular isn't a place. It's a completely different problem.
A prior state does not of itself count as a cause of a phenomenon. For example, suppose we take the prior state of a junk yard. And then there appears a perfectly designed and manufactured Mercedes S-Class Luxury Sedan in this environment. We haven't got the faintest idea how that vehicle got there, but in the absence of any other explanation, we assume that it must have been 'caused' by the junk yard. This is an argument from ignorance: "junk yard of the gaps". The only way we can talk about causation is if we can elucidate the mechanism by which phenomena come into being. Otherwise, all we are doing is juxtaposing two events, states and / or phenomena and passing one off as the cause of the other. Juxtaposition does not explain causality. Just slapping God next to the universe does not provide us with a causal explanation, especially when the gap between God and the universe is a thoroughly counter-intuitive idea.
quote:It is not an explanation. Nor are any of the three 'kinds of approach'. God does not need to approach anything.
quote:Oh yes it is! Because the concept of creatio ex nihilo excludes other explanations, such as creatio ex materia and creatio ex deo. Therefore it is making a general statement about the kind of approach God supposedly took when embarking on the creation of the universe. All three positions are unfathomable, which means that we cannot assume that one must be true and the other two (and any others not listed) false.
No, it is not stating anything about the means of creation.
quote:No - but we know enough to know it has certain properties that God cannot have. For example, we know matter has to be spatially located. And we know any candidate for the cause of the universe cannot be spatially located.
quote:What an extraordinary statement! Do we know what matter is? Have you delved to the furthest depths of matter, fully assured that you can go no further?
Because the process of elimination that leads us to suppose the creator must be without time and without space also leads us to suppose that the creator must be without matter or energy. We don't know what God is; we do know what matter is and therefore we know nothing made of matter could possibly be God.
quote:Are you actively trying to be unhelpful? Why do I have to jump through your hoop at this point and not at any other?
quote:I am well aware of that. But to prove that you are not just playing a semantic game with me, please give me an example of something that is logically possible, yet counterintuitive.
Counterintuitive is not the same as logically impossible.
quote:Skipping past various problems there. (For one: you have a bad case of noun-itis - the belief that where a true sentence contains a noun like 'thoughts' there must be a something the noun refers to in reality.)
quote:You say that information is not made of anything, but you are assuming a materialistic position. Thoughts are still something. And thoughts exist eternally in the mind of God, and then can be realised as a series of active instructions that define the nature of reality.
Why do you think your suggestion
quote:doesn't count as creation ex nihilo?
For all we know, the universe could be nothing more than the realisation of God's thoughts. This information could be the 'stuff' that the universe is made of, and therefore God did not need to create any matter ex nihilo or work on pre-existing matter.
God's thoughts aren't made of pre-existing matter. Nor is information made of anything. But do you reject the term 'ex nihilo' for this?
quote:I'm not sure if asking questions about the properties of imaginary entities is necessarily a bad thing. The whole field of mathematics is exactly about asking questions about the properties of imaginary entities. And mathematics is quite useful in understanding the Universe.
Grokesx: My point was that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" might be equivalent to the question, "What colour are dragons' wings?" In other words in could turn out to be a question about the properties of an imaginary entity.
quote:Why is there anything at all?
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I also don't think that the question "Why is there something instead of nothing" is really about the properties of nothing. It is there more as a contrast. I imagine that it's possible to formulate the question without referring to nothing.
quote:Indeed
mousethief: Why is there anything at all?
quote:OK, so we could then talk about a junk yard in a region prone to high winds and hurricanes, which cause the objects in the yard to move around and therefore interact.
Originally posted by Dafyd
I don't think I've made the point clear to you.
A junkyard is not a causal explanation because it is not an event. Nor is it a state: it's a thing. Junkyards sit there doing nothing except quietly rusting. So if a Bentley appears in one we want to know why it appeared at that time and not at any other time. Whereas undersea volcanic vents are releasing chemicals and churning them up: they are comprised of lots of events.
quote:Your comment is full of assumptions. The discoveries of quantum mechanics would call one of your assumptions into question, namely, "we know matter has to be spatially located." Are you familiar with this experiment which demonstrated that a 'large' object (by the standards of QM) can be in two places at the same time (vibrating and not vibrating at the same time, which, of course, has a spatial implication)? It is highly questionable whether space is actually as absolute as your comment seems to imply.
quote:No - but we know enough to know it has certain properties that God cannot have. For example, we know matter has to be spatially located. And we know any candidate for the cause of the universe cannot be spatially located.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical
What an extraordinary statement! Do we know what matter is? Have you delved to the furthest depths of matter, fully assured that you can go no further?
quote:Then the latter may like to explain it - i.e. the concept under consideration, namely, creatio ex nihilo.
...one person's counterintuitive is another person's plain sense
quote:No, I do not have a bad case of 'noun-itis' at all. What you are doing is defining the terms 'something' and 'reality' in a way that supports your conclusion about reality. It's known as question begging. There is no logical reason to suppose that a noumenon cannot qualify as an object in reality, unless you are a naive empiricist (and if so, you could never affirm that you are, because you would need recourse to a noumenon, namely the concept of empiricism). Certainly, in the case of God, whom you affirm to be a non-material being, noumena can certainly be real things. If they cannot, then in what sense can God Himself be a 'something'?
(For one: you have a bad case of noun-itis - the belief that where a true sentence contains a noun like 'thoughts' there must be a something the noun refers to in reality.)
quote:Yet another bold, dogmatic assertion.
Nor is anything made out of instructions, active or otherwise.
quote:You are ignoring what the real cosmological argument is like. You are fighting a straw man. The cosmological argument is not, let me repeat this - not - "there is nothing but God, who is omnipotent, who then creates all else from nothing, therefore things are." That is the straw man you are fighting, that is what your junkyard analogy is about, but it simply is not the gist of the cosmological argument. OK?
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
No, they are not different arguments at all. A prior state does not of itself count as a cause of a phenomenon. For example, suppose we take the prior state of a junk yard. And then there appears a perfectly designed and manufactured Mercedes S-Class Luxury Sedan in this environment. We haven't got the faintest idea how that vehicle got there, but in the absence of any other explanation, we assume that it must have been 'caused' by the junk yard. This is an argument from ignorance: "junk yard of the gaps". The only way we can talk about causation is if we can elucidate the mechanism by which phenomena come into being. Otherwise, all we are doing is juxtaposing two events, states and / or phenomena and passing one off as the cause of the other. Juxtaposition does not explain causality.
quote:First, "creatio ex nihilo" (creation out of nothing) and "creatio ex deo" (creation out of God) are essentially the same thing, unless perhaps if you use a materialistic interpretation of the latter (i.e., if you think God is matter, and all is made out of pieces of God). By "creation out of nothing" we mean "creation out of nothing by God", and thus if we ask where all is coming from we can just as well say "creation out of God". Second, we can validly reject "creatio ex materia" (creation out of matter), because matter is invariably contingent and/or comes into being, hence requires causal explanation and cannot be "uncaused". Your only option is to combine "creatio ex materia" with "creatio ex deo" and make such matter part of a (necessarily existent) God. But note that in a sense the cosmological argument is not affected by this. We are then having a debate about what a necessarily existent entity can be like, we are no longer having a debate about its position as Creator.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Oh yes it is! Because the concept of creatio ex nihilo excludes other explanations, such as creatio ex materia and creatio ex deo. Therefore it is making a general statement about the kind of approach God supposedly took when embarking on the creation of the universe. All three positions are unfathomable, which means that we cannot assume that one must be true and the other two (and any others not listed) false.
quote:Our ongoing investigations in the nature of matter have never revealed anything that would change the metaphysical assessment of it being contingent and/or coming into being. If at all, investigating matter to ever greater detail has made it appear ever more contingent and "arising", i.e., a chunk of gold naively may seem to be made for eternity, but our physical investigations suggest that it is made out of transient entities like quarks and gluons, has arisen in dramatic supernova events, and can be dissolved in aqua regia. Here you are appealing to the miraculous, i.e., some sort of never heard of scientific insight that would revolutionise the metaphysics. I suggest that you cannot even imagine what sort of discovery that would have to be. So should we drop a perfectly fine metaphysical argument just because of the purported possibility of unimaginable fantasy? I do not think that this is reasonable.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
What an extraordinary statement! Do we know what matter is? Have you delved to the furthest depths of matter, fully assured that you can go no further?
quote:Not addressed to me, but anyway: Every electron passing individually through a suitable double slit will be detected as a single particle, but if we detect many of them sequentially (but still proceeding individually), we build up spatial interference patterns as if each electron was a wave.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I am well aware of that. But to prove that you are not just playing a semantic game with me, please give me an example of something that is logically possible, yet counterintuitive.
quote:Sorry, but the "nothing" in question here is not intended to refer to anything that is intrinsic to God. We can discuss to what extent God has "thoughts", and how they relate to creation, but that is rather irrelevant to our discussion here. Nobody is claiming that the universe arose from absolutely nothing. Indeed, the whole point of the cosmological argument is that that is impossible, and that therefore we must posit an entity "God" with specific features.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
You say that information is not made of anything, but you are assuming a materialistic position. Thoughts are still something. And thoughts exist eternally in the mind of God, and then can be realised as a series of active instructions that define the nature of reality.
quote:That's answering, ahem, nothing at all. Ask me questions about Daenerys Targaryen's Dragons' wings and the chances are I'll be able to give an answer.
In fact, the properties of nothing are rather well-known. Ask me any question about nothing, and chances are high that I'll be able to give an answer. "What is the colour of nothing?" "Nothing doesn't have a colour." Simple.
quote:I'm not saying it is a bad thing. Our ability to think in the abstract is the crowning glory of our species. But this thread has touched on one example where we need to be wary of treating a mathematical concept as if it necessarily has a real world counterpart. Just because we can usefully utilise the concept of infinity in maths does not mean to say we can actually check in to the Hilbert Hotel.
I'm not sure if asking questions about the properties of imaginary entities is necessarily a bad thing. The whole field of mathematics is exactly about asking questions about the properties of imaginary entities. And mathematics is quite useful in understanding the Universe.
quote:How can you contrast two things without defining their properties?
I also don't think that the question "Why is there something instead of nothing" is really about the properties of nothing. It is there more as a contrast. I imagine that it's possible to formulate the question without referring to nothing.
quote:The problems this kind of event would set are rather different from, we don't have a clue how it could have happened.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:OK, so we could then talk about a junk yard in a region prone to high winds and hurricanes, which cause the objects in the yard to move around and therefore interact.
Originally posted by Dafyd
I don't think I've made the point clear to you.
A junkyard is not a causal explanation because it is not an event. Nor is it a state: it's a thing. Junkyards sit there doing nothing except quietly rusting. So if a Bentley appears in one we want to know why it appeared at that time and not at any other time. Whereas undersea volcanic vents are releasing chemicals and churning them up: they are comprised of lots of events.
quote:Of course we can. It is not so easy to refute Hume as that.
But the original point I was making is that we cannot talk about causation without reference to mechanism.
quote:The reason this argument appears plausible to you is that you're addressing a slightly different question from, did Michelangelo make this statue. You're addressing the question why could Michelangelo make this statue when most people couldn't.
We may not fathom every aspect of his skill, but we crudely know how this man approached that block of marble.
quote:I have?
just as you have expressed scepticism about the validity of the idea of "material cause".
quote:You really think that the marble of the statue is a necessary component of either Michelangelo or the chisel?
In this instance, the material cause is a necessary component of the efficient cause. To say that we can have an efficient cause without a material cause makes no sense at all.
quote:Before anyone appeals to quantum mechanics I really want to know how much they genuinely understand about it.
quote:Your comment is full of assumptions. The discoveries of quantum mechanics would call one of your assumptions into question, namely, "we know matter has to be spatially located." Are you familiar with this experiment which demonstrated that a 'large' object (by the standards of QM) can be in two places at the same time (vibrating and not vibrating at the same time, which, of course, has a spatial implication)? It is highly questionable whether space is actually as absolute as your comment seems to imply.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical
No - but we know enough to know it has certain properties that God cannot have. For example, we know matter has to be spatially located. And we know any candidate for the cause of the universe cannot be spatially located.
quote:It's a string of words thrown together without understanding. It makes no sense to say that a being is in a dimension. (Has a dimension, is moving in a dimension, is in x number of dimensions, all fine. Is in a dimension: not. Unless you're reading sf/fantasy in which dimension means something different.) Dimensions are not intrinsically higher or lower: if God were in a higher dimension we could just apply a rotation and then it would be a lower dimension.
I certainly believe that God is above space, but being above something is not the same as being completely excluded from it. Just as a three dimensional object can contain two dimensional objects within itself, but yet it is greater than those objects, so I see no reason why a being in a higher dimension should not contain within itself lesser dimensions. It's perfectly logical.
quote:This is entirely off the point.
quote:No, I do not have a bad case of 'noun-itis' at all. What you are doing is defining the terms 'something' and 'reality' in a way that supports your conclusion about reality. It's known as question begging. There is no logical reason to suppose that a noumenon cannot qualify as an object in reality, unless you are a naive empiricist (and if so, you could never affirm that you are, because you would need recourse to a noumenon, namely the concept of empiricism). Certainly, in the case of God, whom you affirm to be a non-material being, noumena can certainly be real things. If they cannot, then in what sense can God Himself be a 'something'?
(For one: you have a bad case of noun-itis - the belief that where a true sentence contains a noun like 'thoughts' there must be a something the noun refers to in reality.)
quote:I could say either and they would mean the same thing. (Whether it would mean what you mean is another matter.)
Instead of creatio ex nihilo, we really ought to be talking about creatio ex mente Dei per potentiam Dei (creation from the mind of God by the power of God). If my O-level Latin is ropey, please someone correct it!
quote:What I was saying (and what Mousethief has shown) is that perhaps the contrast isn't necessary. We can ask the question without the need to contrast it with something else.
Grokesx: How can you contrast two things without defining their properties?
quote:I'm not so confident as you there.
And anyway, the properties of nothing are perfectly well defined.
quote:Simply taking the word nothing out of the question doesn't change the question. The word something is such a general term that any answer would have to start with a definition. I'm not able to formulate a definition that doesn't at least implicitly acknowledge the concept of "nothing".
What I was saying (and what Mousethief has shown) is that perhaps the contrast isn't necessary. We can ask the question without the need to contrast it with something else.
quote:You have linked to a long page with a lot of philosophical stuff going on there. I would prefer it if you could choose one or two things you'd like to discuss, instead of me having to go through the whole page.
Grokesx: I'm not so confident as you there.
quote:I think it's also possible to state the question without referring to 'something'. One could simply take any theory that tries to explain the Universe, point to its basic building blocks, and ask "Where do they come from?"
Grokesx: The word something is such a general term that any answer would have to start with a definition.
quote:Actually, yes we should be agnostic about something completely unproven. Unless you can provide evidence to show that something can come from nothing even with the involvement of an agent - no matter how powerful - then you are asking me to believe that something is true on the basis of naked assertion alone. The comparison with General Relativity is invalid, because that theory is firmly established in science, and, as you have pointed out, it has a practical application. Has the theory of creatio ex nihilo got a practical application? Answer: no. It is nothing more than wild speculation.
Originally posted by IngoB
quote:No, we shouldn't. Just like we shouldn't be agnostic about General Relativity, just because people can use a Sat Nav intuitively without understanding that the GPS employs GR corrections.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Fair enough, but then we should be agnostic about creatio ex nihilo.
quote:As I can't see any evidence or argument in that paragraph that attempts to refute the specific point I made, then I can't really respond. Unless you elucidate the principles by which candidates are eliminated, then nothing more can be said, because you have not given me any concepts to work with.
This is not quite true. Again, much like the typical existence proofs in mathematics, these metaphysical ones attach conditions. Most entities simply will not work as a Creator. Basically, we have a fairly lengthy check list that will eliminate most contenders. But indeed, not all. It is entirely true that other gods than the specifically Christian one would work, as long as they have the right features.
quote:Nothing I have written on this thread disputes that an intelligent personal Creator (God) is the necessary condition for the existence of the universe. I am not an atheist, and neither am I arguing for atheism. What I am disputing is the claim that we must believe that God created the universe ex nihilo. A necessary condition per se is not a cause. And it certainly does qualify as an argument from ignorance (or 'gaps argument') to merely juxtapose a necessary condition to a phenomenon and pass it off as a cause. The context is irrelevant, because the method is the same.
But this is not what the metaphysical arguments are like. They would be more like saying "we do not really know how life originated, but we do know that the presence of underwater volcanic vents was essential and necessary for it coming about." That does not give you a mechanism for creating life from non-life. But it gives you a sine qua non condition: no volcanic vents, no life.
quote:If God shaped the universe from pre-existing matter - a state of chaos, for example - and prior to this created that matter, why would it have to be from nothing? I know it seems like a strange question to ask, but it is not. The reflex answer would perhaps be: because there was no pre-existing pre-matter from which to create matter, and so therefore matter must have been an absolute novelty. But I don't see why this has to be so. I am not convinced that we know what matter actually is at the absolute root. Do we really believe that there exist some irreducible and indivisible blobs of 'stuff' from which all particles and atoms are made? How do we know that we have reached the position of total irreducibility with regard to matter? Perhaps information is at the root of matter? That would make a lot of sense biblically, given that God spoke the universe into being. And it totally solves the problem of creatio ex nihilo, because information that exists in the mind of God is not nothing, but it is from God, but is not part of God, in the same sense that my thoughts are not part of me, unlike my arms and legs.
It is not saying something about the means of creation, but about its mode. We know that there cannot be any pre-existing matter, because then we would have to ask why there is pre-existing matter, rather than nothing. And this would lead us to declaring a "real God", who created pre-existing matter from nothing, whereas the god shaping this matter would be revealed as merely a powerful creature, a demiurge.
quote:You seem very confident in explaining the internal composition of the Almighty (hence your later post to mousethief), and yet strangely unable to explain creatio ex nihilo, which you nevertheless affirm to be true.
God cannot have any parts, because parts require causal explanation and we only call the ultimate cause God.
quote:Yes, but that does not imply that it comes into being from nothing. Thoughts (potential) that are actualised by power - in other words, God's thoughts finding expression in a form external to His own being - is not creation 'from nothing'. But anyway, I originally posed a highly speculative thought in the form of a question concerning pre-existing matter in God, and I am happy to concede to your explanation, which actually makes no difference to my position anyway. I don't need God to possess any repository of pre-existing matter (matter understood as essentially the same substance that we experience as 'matter'), and you have given an answer to this question, which I broadly accept.
It is irrelevant of what substance the purported matter is. Anything that is contingent or comes into being requires a cause.
quote:With all due respect, Ingo, this whole paragraph is not relevant. I am not at all arguing against the existence of God, but specifically against the idea of creatio ex nihilo
A proof of existence does not require the specification of a mechanism in order to be meaningful. For example, when Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discovered pulsars, they demonstrated their existence by observation and defined these objects by their characteristics. But they did not know the mechanism behind their discovery, they did not know what made these signals (they even speculated about aliens). Thomas Gold and Franco Pacini soon after suggested the now accepted mechanism (rotating neutron stars). But it is nonsense to say that until the theory of Gold & Pacini, pulsars were illogical non-entities. Something out there was making these specific radio signals, and to that the name "pulsar" was being given. In our case, the means are metaphysical rather than (radio)astronomical. Consequently, the resulting conditions on the existence of God are also metaphysical: God has to be in this or that way in order to function as Creator. But these are logically sound claims with meaningful content, they are not lunatic ravings.
quote:I don't think so, for the reasons that I shall give...
quote:You are simply wrong about this.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
We have no idea how something can spontaneously pop into existence. We also have no idea how an agent - no matter how powerful - can cause something to pop into existence without manipulating pre-existing material, in other words, create absolute novelty. Both ideas are counter-intuitive, and the latter only appears not to be so, because the impossible scenario is juxtaposed to an omnipotent being. This is intellectual sleight of hand. It is as if the mere presence of this being somehow facilitates the logically impossible to occur. We don't have the slightest inkling as to how He could pull this off. And yet, despite this, we refuse to allow that scenario to be falsified, whereas other equally illogical scenarios are judged to be falsified.
quote:Well, you seem to be saying that very thing, but giving the appearance of saying something different by asserting the concept by a circuitous route. We shall see...
The logic here is not at all: God is omnipotent, therefore He can create from nothing, which explains everything.
quote:So we have come full circle and back to the initial concept, which was denied. But somehow, if we insert all the filler - or what you may term 'context' - the concept of the conclusion is different from my purported interpretation of your position? Hmmm... I don't think so.
...we finally can conclude that omnipotence must include the ability to create something from nothing.
quote:I feel absolutely sure that you have the intelligence to understand the futility of getting into a slagging match over the definition of the word 'Christian'. So I will hold my peace, other than to say that I am more concerned with truth than with conformity to a label.
quote:Fine, but that is non-Christian.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I certainly don't dispute the claim that God created the universe. What I dispute is the assumption that it must have involved absolute novelty, or creation ex nihilo.
quote:"`I see nobody on the road,' said Alice.
Originally posted by mousethief:
The problem is, "nothing" and "something" aren't nouns. They're pronouns. When you treat them as nouns and try to figure out what they stand for, you get nonsense. It's not that the thing that "nothing" refers to is ill-defined. It's that there is no thing called "nothing." The word is shorthand for "not anything" which is also a pronoun. (Well, a pronoun and "not".)
If I said, "It was a boring room; there was nothing on the walls," I'm not saying that the walls were hung with some ineffable substance called "nothing." I'm saying there wasn't anything on the walls; they were bare.
If we say God created the world from nothing, we're not saying there was this substance called nothing from which She created the world. We're saying there wasn't anything from which He created the world. There was no substance nor anything else. It's a foolish mistake to think that "nothing" in this instance refers to something. By definition, "nothing" doesn't refer to something. It just means "not anything."
quote:Pretty much all of that philosophical stuff concerns wrangling over the nature of nothing. The reason I linked to it was to give the lie to your contention that the properties of nothing are perfectly well defined.
You have linked to a long page with a lot of philosophical stuff going on there. I would prefer it if you could choose one or two things you'd like to discuss, instead of me having to go through the whole page.
quote:Call me old fashioned, but if I am asking a question, I'd say it is incumbent on me to define what it is.
You see? Every theory starts with postulating 'something'. And it is up to those theories to explain what this something means. You are putting the burden of definition in the wrong place.
quote:Yeah, well, it can end up with turtles all the way down, an uncaused cause, not a coherent question or something else entirely. You pays your money and takes your choice. As far as I'm concerned they are all contenders and to insist otherwise usually involves ad hoc reasoning defending positions often arrived at by non rational means.
Unless Science comes up with a theory that doesn't postulate its own starting blocks (and I don't think that it can; every theory has to start somewhere), the question "Where do they come from?" is valid.
quote:But pronouns are just stand ins for nouns. They are used when the specifics are already known. If I get mugged I don't say to the police, "He stole my wallet" and expect them to fill in all the relevant details about the mugger themselves.
The problem is, "nothing" and "something" aren't nouns. They're pronouns. When you treat them as nouns and try to figure out what they stand for, you get nonsense.
quote:The page you linked to only served to prove that there are a lot of philosophers who say dumb things about nothing.
Grokesx: Pretty much all of that philosophical stuff concerns wrangling over the nature of nothing. The reason I linked to it was to give the lie to your contention that the properties of nothing are perfectly well defined.
quote:I already formulated the question without including the word 'nothing'. Let's do it another way: "Why isn't the Universe such that for all physical entities e the statement 'e exists' is false?" There, no reference to 'something' or 'nothing' at all.
Grokesx: Call me old fashioned, but if I am asking a question, I'd say it is incumbent on me to define what it is.
quote:Yes, they are all contenders. The hypothesis that the Universe was created by an Almighty God is another one.
Grokesx: Yeah, well, it can end up with turtles all the way down, an uncaused cause, not a coherent question or something else entirely. You pays your money and takes your choice. As far as I'm concerned they are all contenders and to insist otherwise usually involves ad hoc reasoning defending positions often arrived at by non rational means.
quote:Actually, if you think about what 'composition' means you'll see that IngoB hasn't explained anything. A thing's composition is the parts that make it up; if it has no parts it has no composition. IngoB's answer to what parts God has is of the same logical form as the answer to what creation is made out of. In both cases the answer is that the concepts of the question do not apply.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:You seem very confident in explaining the internal composition of the Almighty (hence your later post to mousethief), and yet strangely unable to explain creatio ex nihilo, which you nevertheless affirm to be true.
Originally posted by IngoB
God cannot have any parts, because parts require causal explanation and we only call the ultimate cause God.
quote:Um... what is the information from God made out of? Information isn't made out of anything? That's the same as saying it's made out of nothing.
Perhaps information is at the root of matter? That would make a lot of sense biblically, given that God spoke the universe into being. And it totally solves the problem of creatio ex nihilo, because information that exists in the mind of God is not nothing, but it is from God, but is not part of God, in the same sense that my thoughts are not part of me, unlike my arms and legs.
quote:You are simply substituting one generalisation for another.
"Why isn't the Universe such that for all physical entities e the statement 'e exists' is false?"
quote:As Ingo never tires of telling us, the uncaused cause covers that base.
The hypothesis that the Universe was created by an Almighty God is another one.
quote:No, you challenged me to ask the question in such a way that each of its components is well-defined, and I complied. And it is a question that Science can't answer.
Grokesx: You are simply substituting one generalisation for another.
quote:I think about God differently than IngoB does. I don't believe that He is the uncaused cause. But at least you're agreeing with me that all of those contenders are on the same level as far as Science is concerned.
Grokesx: As Ingo never tires of telling us, the uncaused cause covers that base.
quote:Well, if we are going to define existence in terms of composition, then God does not exist, because, as you and Ingo have argued, God is not composed of anything. Therefore he does not exist. Hence:
Originally posted by Dafyd
Um... what is the information from God made out of? Information isn't made out of anything? That's the same as saying it's made out of nothing.
quote:(So you are doing some of the atheist's heavy lifting for him, with this insistence on creatio ex nihilo. I gave another example of this very thing in my last reply to IngoB.)
Actually, if you think about what 'composition' means you'll see that IngoB hasn't explained anything. A thing's composition is the parts that make it up; if it has no parts it has no composition. IngoB's answer to what parts God has is of the same logical form as the answer to what creation is made out of. In both cases the answer is that the concepts of the question do not apply.
quote:So do you agree information is created ex nihilo?
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:Well, if we are going to define existence in terms of composition, then God does not exist, because, as you and Ingo have argued, God is not composed of anything.
Originally posted by Dafyd
Um... what is the information from God made out of? Information isn't made out of anything? That's the same as saying it's made out of nothing.
quote:And in other news one plus one equals two and bears defecate in afforested areas.
If you affirm that God does exist, but yet it is meaningless to talk about that of which He is composed, then the same reasoning could apply to the thoughts of God.
quote:Is God free to choose what God thinks?
And it's no good saying that the thoughts of God are not somehow eternal, because they are composed of parts - or because the "thoughts of God" are not 'God'. That implies that God could exist in a state without any thoughts, and thus be devoid of any knowledge or wisdom. The eternal omniscient God possesses eternally existent thoughts, otherwise He would not be omniscient.
quote:Picking at nits. It doesn't change the substantive point, namely, that "nothing" is just a stand-in for "not anything." What domain to draw the anything from is irrelevant to the argument that "nothing" must perforce stand for some kind of substance.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
Just to clarify. The "nothing" in your wall example stands for "not anything of interest to you.
quote:Well, given that meaningful information (i.e. information other than gibberish) only works by means of logic, and given that logic tells us that ex nihilo nihil fit, then I am required to conclude that information cannot be created ex nihilo. Perhaps non-logical information could be. I am not too interested in that stuff, and I suspect neither is God.
Originally posted by Dafyd
So do you agree information is created ex nihilo?
quote:If this is the level at which you wish to debate, by being pedantic about a turn of phrase - namely, "if we are going to define", which clearly means nothing more than "if we are defining" - then I have better things to do, quite frankly.
(Was I going to define existence in terms of composition? I don't think I was. If it's true you've got excellent precognitive abilities.)
quote:Sarcasm doesn't make your position look very good, I'm afraid.
And in other news one plus one equals two and bears defecate in afforested areas.
quote:If you followed my reasoning, you would see that if I affirmed such a position, then it would entail believing that God came into being from nothing, which is clearly absurd. Or it would mean that the question is unanswerable, and therefore no solution can ever be affirmed. Thus the dogma of creatio ex nihilo is invalid. Whatever questions you ask of information should also be asked of God. Since you are not prepared to do the latter, then why do you insist on the former?
So you agree that the thoughts of God are created ex nihilo?
quote:I assume so. And your point is? Are you suggesting that self-imposed ignorance is a necessary condition for the exercise of freedom?
Is God free to choose what God thinks?
quote:It's relevant if you want to attempt any sort of coherent answer. If all you want is some vague platitudinous pseudo question to help shovel people towards a pre-determined conclusion - "Why is there something rather than nothing?" "Because He wanted it that way," then fair enough.
What domain to draw the anything from is irrelevant to the argument that "nothing" must perforce stand for some kind of substance.
quote:You are sounding like Krauss, Dawkins and Hawking rolled into one there. While it is a truth universally acknowledged that on the internet a man in possession of a philosophical argument is in want of a life, I think proper philosophers who actually use logic and philosophical inquiry as a tool rather than a weapon can and do further our understanding of thorny issues.
The page you linked to only served to prove that there are a lot of philosophers who say dumb things about nothing.
quote:Looks like a question about theories and the limits of our knowledge at this time to me.
The question that comes down to: "Why isn't it true that all theories that can be applied to the Universe are equivalent to the empty set?"
There you are. A well-defined scientific question. And it is one for which Science doesn't have an answer..
quote:When the so-called philosophers on that page say things like "The gravitational constant of an empty world can equal any real number between 0 and 1", they clearly don't have a grasp of what the relationship (and the difference) is between a theory of physics and reality. That's just one of the logical faults on that page, there are many, many more. I could go on for weeks pointing all of them out.
Grokesx: I think proper philosophers who actually use logic and philosophical inquiry as a tool rather than a weapon can and do further our understanding of thorny issues.
quote:Did I? Reading back, it seems that I may have agreed with this by accident. I'm taking that part back then. It isn't an incoherent question.
Grokesx: Anyway, I don't know what we're arguing about any more - I agree God is a possible answer and you agreed that it might turn out to be an incoherent question, which is all I was saying anyway.
quote:Does logic tell us that? Nothing comes from nothing is not an axiom in any logical system that I'm aware of. You could perhaps deduce some form of it from the axiom of non-contradiction. But I don't believe that there's any logical principle that would support such a proposition in the way and to the effect that you're using it.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:Well, given that meaningful information (i.e. information other than gibberish) only works by means of logic, and given that logic tells us that ex nihilo nihil fit, then I am required to conclude that information cannot be created ex nihilo.
Originally posted by Dafyd
So do you agree information is created ex nihilo?
quote:But we are not defining existence in terms of composition.
quote:If this is the level at which you wish to debate, by being pedantic about a turn of phrase - namely, "if we are going to define", which clearly means nothing more than "if we are defining" - then I have better things to do, quite frankly.
(Was I going to define existence in terms of composition? I don't think I was. If it's true you've got excellent precognitive abilities.)
quote:I am bothered by the word 'through'. Please tell me you don't think 'through eternity' means the same as 'throughout all time'.
quote:I assume so. And your point is? Are you suggesting that self-imposed ignorance is a necessary condition for the exercise of freedom?
Is God free to choose what God thinks?
Or perhaps you deny God's omniscience?
If God is omniscient, then the information in His mind co-exists with Him through all eternity. Therefore that information cannot arise ex nihilo.
quote:But the axioms of logic constitute a tool that we apply to propositions and concepts, which, of course, include the principles of causality. These axioms are necessarily applied consistently. Therefore, logic cannot tell us one thing about the nature of causality, on the one hand, and then contravene that position with regard to the origin of information.
Originally posted by Dafyd
quote:Does logic tell us that? Nothing comes from nothing is not an axiom in any logical system that I'm aware of. You could perhaps deduce some form of it from the axiom of non-contradiction. But I don't believe that there's any logical principle that would support such a proposition in the way and to the effect that you're using it.
Well, given that meaningful information (i.e. information other than gibberish) only works by means of logic, and given that logic tells us that ex nihilo nihil fit, then I am required to conclude that information cannot be created ex nihilo.
quote:You made the following statement earlier in the thread:
We are not defining existence in terms of composition. Therefore it is irrelevant what would happen if we did.
quote:You claim that information is not made of anything. This leads me to wonder whether you believe that information actually exists. This question seems to be answered - in a rather obscure way - in the following comment:
God's thoughts aren't made of pre-existing matter. Nor is information made of anything. But do you reject the term 'ex nihilo' for this?
quote:This was in response to my comment:
You have a bad case of noun-itis - the belief that where a true sentence contains a noun like 'thoughts' there must be a something the noun refers to in reality.
quote:Putting all this together leads me inexorably to the conclusion that you don't believe that information actually exists, because it is not "made of anything". In other words, you are defining existence in terms of composition.
You say that information is not made of anything, but you are assuming a materialistic position. Thoughts are still something. And thoughts exist eternally in the mind of God, and then can be realised as a series of active instructions that define the nature of reality.
quote:Oh no, I am such a simpleton that I really do believe that it means "throughout all time". (See I can do sarcasm as well!)
I am bothered by the word 'through'. Please tell me you don't think 'through eternity' means the same as 'throughout all time'.
quote:You seem to be implying that somehow there has existed a state in which God is ignorant of some fact about His creation. But God's eternal knowledge (which anthropomorphically is termed 'foreknowledge' - inaccurate of course, because that implies that the eternally present God has knowledge of 'the future', which, of course, is a contradiction in terms) is knowledge of that which 'is', quite irrespective of how it came into being.
Let's assume some fact about creation: Everest is the highest mountain on earth. God knows this. the information that Everest is the highest mountain on earth is clearly coextensive with Everest being the highest mountain on earth. Now Now, God could certainly have chosen not to create at all, and could probably have chosen to create the world differently, in which case it would not be true that Everest was the highest mountain on earth. And therefore the information that Everest is the highest mountain on earth wouldn't exist either.
So any information about creation is contingent upon God's free decision to create itself. And therefore the information is created by God's free decision. So it cannot be co-existent with God.
quote:My point was that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" might turn out to be a question about the properties of an imaginary entity, and hence be an incoherent question. I’m not sure where the disproof of this modest claim is, because all we’ve done so far is witter on about definitions. Usually definitions precede proof.
I was simply disproving a stupid claim. I wasn't making a claim of my own. Your claim is disproved. The conversation can move on to other grounds, I don't care.
quote:Well actually, that is what a lot of it is about. And it is something that is not as clear cut as you seem to think. In fact you demonstrated that quite nicely when you attempted to define nothing and could only do it in terms of theories.
When the so-called philosophers on that page say things like "The gravitational constant of an empty world can equal any real number between 0 and 1", they clearly don't have a grasp of what the relationship (and the difference) is between a theory of physics and reality.
quote:And you know this how? None of our current theories include a term for nothing that would satisfy those who don't like a definition including quantum fields. (Interestingly, some of the same people are quite sanguine about the notion of nothing that also includes God, but who needs consistency when special pleading is your friend?)
It isn't an incoherent question.
quote:No, it's utter gibberish. Things like the gravitational constant are just numbers in a model. They only become real if they can be measured in an experiment. In an 'empty world' there is nothing by which this constant can be measured.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
quote:Well actually, that is what a lot of it is about.
When the so-called philosophers on that page say things like "The gravitational constant of an empty world can equal any real number between 0 and 1", they clearly don't have a grasp of what the relationship (and the difference) is between a theory of physics and reality.
quote:So what? For everything physics tries to describe, it needs theories. Try to explain what a quantum field is without using theories.
Grokesx: In fact you demonstrated that quite nicely when you attempted to define nothing and could only do it in terms of theories.
quote:Because I already formulated it coherently. And without including the term 'nothing'.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
quote:And you know this how?
It isn't an incoherent question.
quote:And I have demonstrated that it's not a question about an entity at all, because "nothing" is not a name. You are making a linguistic category error.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
@mousethief
quote:My point was that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" might turn out to be a question about the properties of an imaginary entity, and hence be an incoherent question. I’m not sure where the disproof of this modest claim is, because all we’ve done so far is witter on about definitions. Usually definitions precede proof.
I was simply disproving a stupid claim. I wasn't making a claim of my own. Your claim is disproved. The conversation can move on to other grounds, I don't care.
quote:Many, many, many questions within physics are about imaginary entities:
Grokesx: My point was that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" might turn out to be a question about the properties of an imaginary entity, and hence be an incoherent question.
quote:I'm struggling to see how that establishes as a logical principle that if something comes into being it must be made out of something pre-existing.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:But the axioms of logic constitute a tool that we apply to propositions and concepts, which, of course, include the principles of causality. These axioms are necessarily applied consistently. Therefore, logic cannot tell us one thing about the nature of causality, on the one hand, and then contravene that position with regard to the origin of information.
Originally posted by Dafyd
Nothing comes from nothing is not an axiom in any logical system that I'm aware of. You could perhaps deduce some form of it from the axiom of non-contradiction. But I don't believe that there's any logical principle that would support such a proposition in the way and to the effect that you're using it.
quote:So putting two and two together leads you inexorably to the conclusion five.
quote:You made the following statement earlier in the thread:
We are not defining existence in terms of composition. Therefore it is irrelevant what would happen if we did.
quote:You claim that information is not made of anything. This leads me to wonder whether you believe that information actually exists. This question seems to be answered - in a rather obscure way - in the following comment:
[QB] [QUOTE]God's thoughts aren't made of pre-existing matter. Nor is information made of anything. But do you reject the term 'ex nihilo' for this?
quote:This was in response to my comment:
You have a bad case of noun-itis - the belief that where a true sentence contains a noun like 'thoughts' there must be a something the noun refers to in reality.
quote:Putting all this together leads me inexorably to the conclusion that you don't believe that information actually exists, because it is not "made of anything". In other words, you are defining existence in terms of composition.
You say that information is not made of anything, but you are assuming a materialistic position. Thoughts are still something. And thoughts exist eternally in the mind of God, and then can be realised as a series of active instructions that define the nature of reality.
quote:I refer you to the passage in the post you didn't reply to about 'falls' and 'freezes' and 'melts'.
I certainly believe that information exists, otherwise the functionality of memory is inexplicable. Does this physical mechanism really store 'nothing'? Do we really spend years in school and university putting 'nothing' in our brains? And also... Are the posts on this thread really nothing more than patterns of pixels, that are interpreted entirely subjectively? Are we all engaging in a mass delusion when we communicate, and when we speak about meaning?
quote:At this stage, you cannot use the temporal anthropomorphic analogy of foreknowing. That's too anthropomorphic.
You seem to be implying that somehow there has existed a state in which God is ignorant of some fact about His creation. But God's eternal knowledge (which anthropomorphically is termed 'foreknowledge' - inaccurate of course, because that implies that the eternally present God has knowledge of 'the future', which, of course, is a contradiction in terms) is knowledge of that which 'is', quite irrespective of how it came into being.
But actually your objection is irrelevant. Because the information by which Everest was created pre-exists its existence. We are talking here, of course, about formal cause. No matter how we may think God brought it into existence - whether by direct creation, or indirect formation through the action of tectonic plates, there still existed information that determined the nature of the effect. And then, as mentioned, there is the information relating directly to the effect, which is (anthropomorphically speaking) foreknown by God.
quote:I referred to the phrase "God of the gaps" to describe an argument from ignorance, where either God - or some putative activity of God - is simply proposed as an explanation of what we don't understand. I agree that God can be inferred as the creator of the universe by a process of elimination, and, of course, I certainly believe that God is indeed the creator of the universe. But while we may be able to justify inferring God as the creator, we cannot then hang illogical or counterintuitive ideas onto that explanation. My dispute is not with the claim that God is the creator, but rather the insistence on the idea of creatio ex nihilo. If we acknowledge that we cannot understand the means by which God created the universe, then we should not formulate ideas suggestive of a particular creative approach, and certainly we should not promote them as dogma, and insinuate that those who question them are somehow less than orthodox in their Christianity.
Originally posted by IngoB
You keep going on about this being a "God of the gaps" explanation. Sure, it is, but in a perfectly unproblematic sense. Namely, we have demonstrated that 1) there is a gap, and 2) nothing but God can fill it. We were able to deduce the sort of entity that must occupy this particular gap, and we know that nothing in nature can fill it in principle. Since this is a principle argument, it matters not in the slightest what the study of physics will come up with say in the next ten thousand years. If the argument is true, it will hold against any specifics there will ever be. If the argument is false, it should be possible to show this now (because it makes no reference to specifics).
That an explanation of mechanism is absent does not mean that this argument is invalid or useless. Any mechanistic explanation would have to operate within the constraints of this argument, it sets the framework.
quote:What you seem to be saying is this: creatio ex nihilo actually means "creation out of nothing material", which is equivalent to "creation out of something, which is not material". It is only not equivalent if you mean "creation of out absolutely nothing or out of nothing material", which is simply a statement describing the first step in a process of elimination: "we have ruled out matter, but are open to the idea that God created out of something else, even though we think He could have actually created the universe out of absolutely nothing." Well, these formulations are so far removed from the common sense meaning of "creation out of nothing", that really the phrase creatio ex nihilo is not fit for purpose. Language is a tool of communication. It should not be a tool of obfuscation.
First, "creatio ex nihilo" (creation out of nothing) and "creatio ex deo" (creation out of God) are essentially the same thing, unless perhaps if you use a materialistic interpretation of the latter (i.e., if you think God is matter, and all is made out of pieces of God). By "creation out of nothing" we mean "creation out of nothing by God", and thus if we ask where all is coming from we can just as well say "creation out of God". Second, we can validly reject "creatio ex materia" (creation out of matter), because matter is invariably contingent and/or comes into being, hence requires causal explanation and cannot be "uncaused". Your only option is to combine "creatio ex materia" with "creatio ex deo" and make such matter part of a (necessarily existent) God. But note that in a sense the cosmological argument is not affected by this. We are then having a debate about what a necessarily existent entity can be like, we are no longer having a debate about its position as Creator.
quote:But I am not disputing the contingent nature of matter. The biblical position (which as Christians we must surely refer to, while acknowledging that the Bible is not a science book) appears to be that God created the universe by His Word. Word is information (although, of course, we know it can also refer to Christ). The idea that matter derives from, let's say, information, does not undermine its contingent status. A command can be spoken forth, and realised in space-time. It can be expressed in a certain way through contingent forms. The contingent entity is 'made of' - and therefore dependent on - that which eternally exists in God.
Our ongoing investigations in the nature of matter have never revealed anything that would change the metaphysical assessment of it being contingent and/or coming into being. If at all, investigating matter to ever greater detail has made it appear ever more contingent and "arising", i.e., a chunk of gold naively may seem to be made for eternity, but our physical investigations suggest that it is made out of transient entities like quarks and gluons, has arisen in dramatic supernova events, and can be dissolved in aqua regia. Here you are appealing to the miraculous, i.e., some sort of never heard of scientific insight that would revolutionise the metaphysics. I suggest that you cannot even imagine what sort of discovery that would have to be. So should we drop a perfectly fine metaphysical argument just because of the purported possibility of unimaginable fantasy? I do not think that this is reasonable.
quote:I asked a question and you have given a good answer. I agree that counterintuitive cannot be defined as "logically impossible", as your answer shows. But when we discover something in nature which we cannot understand, but whose reality we cannot deny, then we try to look for an explanation. Scientists and philosophers do not simply conclude that "every electron passing individually through a suitable double slit will be detected as a single particle etc...", because that is an observation not a conclusion. We say that this is true - is part of reality - because it has been observed. We have empirical proof, even though we do not understand how this can be.
quote:Not addressed to me, but anyway: Every electron passing individually through a suitable double slit will be detected as a single particle, but if we detect many of them sequentially (but still proceeding individually), we build up spatial interference patterns as if each electron was a wave.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I am well aware of that. But to prove that you are not just playing a semantic game with me, please give me an example of something that is logically possible, yet counterintuitive.
quote:Firstly, I was talking about the application of logic, and secondly, I am certainly applying it consistently. I did not say that "it is impossible for matter to be created", but rather that is not created from nothing. Secondly, I did not say that information was created, even though you then acknowledge that I have argued that it is not created. Maybe there's a typo in your comment somewhere, because you've contradicted yourself. I made the point that, because God is omniscient, then the information in His mind co-exists with him 'through' all eternity (and I explained what I meant by that preposition). Therefore information is not created.
Originally posted by Dafyd
I'm struggling to see how that establishes as a logical principle that if something comes into being it must be made out of something pre-existing.
Anyway, my argument is that you're not applying them consistently. That is, you think it's impossible for matter to be created, but you're fine with information being created. (And yes - I've read your argument that information isn't created - I think it isn't sound.)
quote:Well, given that you haven't presented any argument in this response, I cannot really comment. You've asserted that I have put two and two together and made five, and you support that claim with.... nothing! Well I guess that's what the thread's about!!
So putting two and two together leads you inexorably to the conclusion five.
I'd say you were getting hold of the stick by the wrong end, except I'm not sure you've even got the right stick.
quote:An analogy that has all the force of common sense intuition behind it, but unfortunately it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, I'm afraid. I hope you remember that you reminded me that counterintuitive is not synonymous with illogical, and the corollary of this is obviously that intuitive is not synonymous with logical. So just because an analogy may press all the right intuitive buttons does not mean that it's the final word on reality.
Do shapes exist?
You have a lump of plasticine and you make it into a cube. Do you now have the plasticine and a cube as well? No. You just have the plasticine which is in the shape of the cube. If we talk about the shape we can reduce that to talk about the plasticine. We don't need both shape and plasticine lying around in our ontology.
Does that mean shapes don't exist? That would be a misunderstanding too. Both 'shapes exist' and 'shapes don't exist' are misstatements, misunderstandings of what talk about shapes is talk about.
quote:What do you mean by the information being 'caused' by a necessary cause? There is no state in which God exists where the information in His infinite mind does not exist. This information is therefore a possession of God. As I said, an infinite range of possibilities exist in the mind of God. Did he 'cause' these possibilities? If so, it is a concept of causation about which we know nothing, and therefore the word 'cause' in this context is effectively meaningless.
Now, information about creation is contingent. Whether or not God foreknew it or not, the truth of that information is as contingent as creation. Therefore, that information must be caused by a necessary cause just as creation is.
So in same the logical sense in which God preexists creation God preexists any information about creation.
quote:This is just a variant of the "can God create a stone too heavy for Him to lift" objection to His omnipotence. It is easily refuted. Just as God cannot do what is logically impossible, so He cannot know that which is logically impossible. Valid information is subject to the laws of logic, so your point is completely irrelevant.
And, no, appeals to omniscience are not going to bridge that logical gap. It makes no sense to say God knows something that isn't there to be known. God does not know the value of the largest prime number.
quote:Whether you have a point here or not is actually not particularly relevant, because this kind of contingent knowledge is not necessarily the information God used in His work as first cause of the universe.
God's foreknowledge of the future is possible because for God it is not foreknowledge - but is there to be known just as our present is.
quote:You're rather quick to accuse me and IngoB of making statements about things we can't possibly know. Yet here you're making a confident statement about what 'infinite mind implies', which, again, you can't possibly know.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:All possibilities exist in the mind of God. That is what the concept of "infinite mind" implies. Some of these possibilities are actualised.
Originally posted by Dafyd
I'm struggling to see how that establishes as a logical principle that if something comes into being it must be made out of something pre-existing.
quote:Well, given that you haven't presented any argument in this response, I cannot really comment. You've asserted that I have put two and two together and made five, and you support that claim with.... nothing![/QB][/QUOTE]
So putting two and two together leads you inexorably to the conclusion five.
I'd say you were getting hold of the stick by the wrong end, except I'm not sure you've even got the right stick.
quote:Firstly, would you like to support your claim that my argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny?
quote:An analogy that has all the force of common sense intuition behind it, but unfortunately it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, I'm afraid. I hope you remember that you reminded me that counterintuitive is not synonymous with illogical, and the corollary of this is obviously that intuitive is not synonymous with logical. So just because an analogy may press all the right intuitive buttons does not mean that it's the final word on reality.
Does that mean shapes don't exist? That would be a misunderstanding too. Both 'shapes exist' and 'shapes don't exist' are misstatements, misunderstandings of what talk about shapes is talk about.
quote:That is nonsense. It is meaningless to say that an omnipresent being can take a journey, just as it is meaningless to say that an omniscient being can learn something new.
We have a being who is omnipresent. God, in other words. He is in all places at all times, but we know from the Bible (and I hope our own experience) that He can also act in time and space.
Now, even though He is omnipresent, God decides to take a journey on earth, between point 'A' and point 'B'.
quote:If we know nothing of any such concept of causation, we know less than nothing of any concept of the states God's infinite mind does or doesn't exist in.
quote:What do you mean by the information being 'caused' by a necessary cause? There is no state in which God exists where the information in His infinite mind does not exist. This information is therefore a possession of God. As I said, an infinite range of possibilities exist in the mind of God. Did he 'cause' these possibilities? If so, it is a concept of causation about which we know nothing, and therefore the word 'cause' in this context is effectively meaningless.
Now, information about creation is contingent. Whether or not God foreknew it or not, the truth of that information is as contingent as creation. Therefore, that information must be caused by a necessary cause just as creation is.
So in same the logical sense in which God preexists creation God preexists any information about creation.
quote:The point is that it is impossible for anyone to know information that isn't valid. (True by virtue of the meaning of 'know'.) The statement does not become possible if you put 'God' in for anyone. God doesn't know information that isn't valid. Information doesn't become valid until God decides that it is valid. Therefore, in the logical state in which God has not yet decided that the information is valid God doesn't know it.
quote:This is just a variant of the "can God create a stone too heavy for Him to lift" objection to His omnipotence. It is easily refuted. Just as God cannot do what is logically impossible, so He cannot know that which is logically impossible. Valid information is subject to the laws of logic, so your point is completely irrelevant.
It makes no sense to say God knows something that isn't there to be known. God does not know the value of the largest prime number.
quote:Only if it's Zermello Frankel PLUS CHOICE.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
At mousethief
So we can get back where we started, via Russell's Paradox if you like. We could formulate, or we could if we were Zermelo and Fraenkel, a way out, but whether we think there actually is any isomorphism between ZFC and the real world depends very much on our opinions about the philosophy maths. Which is just another way of saying what I have been saying all along, which was simply that the concept of nothing may well turn out to one that lives only in our collective heads. Like infinity.
Again, I really don't know what is so controversial. After all, greater minds than mine, and maybe even yours, have been exercised by this apparent conundrum without the sky falling in.
quote:To make this clear once more (for indeed I must have explained this half a dozen times by now), the very process of the cosmological argument that leads to a proof of God absolutely requires "creatio ex nihilo". We are not attaching some concept there based on a whim. We are stating precisely the condition that allowed us to deduce the existence of God, namely that nothing else than God could still be left at the point of creation. We know exactly one thing about how God created, thanks to this argument: namely that it was from nothing. If that is not true, then this argument for the existence of God fails. You have not shown that it fails, and there is absolutely no need for me to fill in some further "mechanistic" gap. There is no gap in the logic of the argument, just because it does not deliver all the information that you would like to have.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I agree that God can be inferred as the creator of the universe by a process of elimination, and, of course, I certainly believe that God is indeed the creator of the universe. But while we may be able to justify inferring God as the creator, we cannot then hang illogical or counterintuitive ideas onto that explanation. My dispute is not with the claim that God is the creator, but rather the insistence on the idea of creatio ex nihilo.
quote:But we do understand that God must create from nothing, and we can hence declare with certainty not only that people who think otherwise are heretics or non-Christians, which is a point about Christian doctrine, but also that they are plain wrong, which is a point about metaphysics.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If we acknowledge that we cannot understand the means by which God created the universe, then we should not formulate ideas suggestive of a particular creative approach, and certainly we should not promote them as dogma, and insinuate that those who question them are somehow less than orthodox in their Christianity.
quote:There has been no "rush". (Primary) matter is not necessarily existent, therefore it cannot have existed at the point of creation. If you disagree, then you need to show that it is possible to declare that both God and (primary) matter can be necessarily existent, in spite of us being able to tell them apart. If they are two different entities, then there must be a cause why there are these two entities. If they are part of the same entity, or one is part of the other, then there must be a cause for this internal structure. At any rate, this is incompatible with necessary existence of God and (primary) matter, since it depends on a cause. If you say that the differentiating cause itself is necessary, then it is this cause that I call "God", whereas the resulting entities I call demiurge (not "God") and (primary) matter.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The rush to assume creatio ex nihilo is presumptuous. You have referred to the "sin of presumption" in other contexts, but why should it not also apply in this context?
quote:No. What I'm saying is that it is creation out of nothing, full stop. However. I'm also saying that creation is not a spontaneous process, rather it is an act of a Creator. So imagine a carpenter making a table out of wood. Now remove the wood, but not the table. Then it is entirely sensible to say that now the carpenter is making the table "out of nothing". This does not require me to say that the carpenter has disappeared, too. Of course, in this situation there is a sense in which the table is now created "out of the carpenter". Not in the sense that somehow parts of the carpenter form the table, but in the sense that the only entity we can point to when asked "where does this table come from" is the carpenter. Still, it remains perfectly sensible to say that this table is "made out of nothing", namely without wood. Now, this analogy of course is about a material object, but that's simply because our experience is about material objects. I also say that there was no pre-existing immaterial entity out of which God fashioned creation. God created out of nothing.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
What you seem to be saying is this: creatio ex nihilo actually means "creation out of nothing material", which is equivalent to "creation out of something, which is not material".
quote:Given that people have communicated just fine with this expression for at least a thousand years, the problem here clearly lies with you.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Language is a tool of communication. It should not be a tool of obfuscation.
quote:OK, if matter is contingent, then it is not necessarily existent and therefore it must have been created. The traditional Christian interpretation of "God's Word" is that this means the Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos, the Son, the Lord that incarnated as Jesus Christ. This is of course God Himself, so it changes nothing concerning the cosmological argument. If you wish, it is a further answer concerning the "mechanism" of creation. But it is an answer obtained by revelation, not philosophy. And it is an answer that does not change the philosophical statement that "God created all out of nothing".
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
But I am not disputing the contingent nature of matter. The biblical position (which as Christians we must surely refer to, while acknowledging that the Bible is not a science book) appears to be that God created the universe by His Word.
quote:There is no "also" about this. The "Word" at the beginning of creation needs must be a reference to God, and by Christian revelation we identify this with the Second Person of the Trinity, who by further revelation we believe to have incarnated as Jesus Christ (whom you hence by virtue of Personal union may call the "Word", though I don't think that anybody ever called Jesus that while He walked 1st century Palestine). It is of course up to you to call this Second Person "Information", if that makes you happy. However, that move will not get you out of the tight net of conclusions concerning God, because that "Information" just is God.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Word is information (although, of course, we know it can also refer to Christ). The idea that matter derives from, let's say, information, does not undermine its contingent status.
quote:Indeed. And my endlessly reiterated point has been that we have metaphysical proof that God created out of nothing. Now, if you accept nothing but empiricial proof, then frankly that is too fucking bad for you. That is not a defensible position, as has been argued on these boards many times before. (Essentially, one cannot prove empirically that only empirical proof counts.) If you doubt all metaphysics, then you are in somewhat better company: only imbeciles believe in the absolute rule of empirics but some clever people have adopted a critical stance towards metaphysics. Yet that means that you adopt a fundamental stance of pessimism to the capacity of the human mind, because metaphysics is based on optimism about it (basically, metaphysics assumes that we can correctly infer universals from specifics). At which point any further complaints about "gaps" in explanations are suspicious, for you have declared your own mind to not be trustworthy. Personally, I'm optimistic about the human mind. And yes, that's not an argument, but neither is pessimism about the human mind. It is simply a declaration what sort of discussions I care about.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
But when we discover something in nature which we cannot understand, but whose reality we cannot deny, then we try to look for an explanation. Scientists and philosophers do not simply conclude that "every electron passing individually through a suitable double slit will be detected as a single particle etc...", because that is an observation not a conclusion. We say that this is true - is part of reality - because it has been observed. We have empirical proof, even though we do not understand how this can be.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
But the idea of creatio ex nihilo stands on a completely different epistemic basis. We have not observed this. I know that some scientists claim that particles can pop in and out of existence, but could that not simply be an assumption? We may observe that particles act like this, but how do we know that they are not simply popping in and out of unobserved dimensions of reality?
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
Dude, seriously, you are not listening. That sort of physical process, whatever it may be, is not "creation from nothing". That's precisely what we tell all those atheists who go on about quantum fluctuations that created the universe. A quantum fluctuation is not nothing. The very point is that we can always ask "and where did that come from". You can ask that about quantum fluctuations, multiverses, M-branes or whatever. The "causal acid" dissolves everything, but it is impossible for nothing to spontaneously become something. Hence, God. And yes, that's a "gap filler". But is an essential "gap filler". You cannot close that gap with anything physical by virtue of the very argument that led you to the gap. Hence, indeed, God. quote:Well, yes, but nobody here has made that category error. You asked for a demonstration that "counterintuitive" is not equivalent to "illogical", and that has now been shown. It does follow that you cannot simply assume this equivalence when discussing other categories of arguments.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Divine creatio ex nihilo is not an observed reality that we just happen not to understand. It's the conclusion of a particular line of reasoning based on certain philosophical premises. So it would be a category error to compare this idea with the observation of the behaviour of particles in the double slit experiment.
quote:So you are saying the question, "Why is there anything at all?" does not contain an implicit reference to nothing? The question asks the reason for anything at all, so does it not implicitly assume there is a state of not anything at all, at least in theory? And what is not anything at all, if not nothing?
No, again you miss the entire point. Nothing has nothing to do with it. It's merely a way of speaking. The question, as has been demonstrated, can be formulated without using the concept of "nothing" at all. You clearly are stuck on this nothing idea. That's not the issue.
quote:You said that all questions about imaginary entities were incoherent (here). I have to say that isn't easy to discuss things with someone who keeps backpedalling like this.
Grokesx: Turning to leroc's imaginary entities from physics, I don't think I advocated anywhere that we junk all imaginary entities from science.
quote:So, now you're saying that questions about imaginary entities can be coherent as long as they are 'easy to define' and there are 'specified referents aplenty' (can you hear the sound of the moving goalposts)?
Grokesx: Also, these things, you will notice, are pretty easy to define, because there are specified referents aplenty.
quote:I'm not formulating hypotheses, I'm just asking a question.
Grokesx: I don’t see, LeRoc, how you can generate any sort of disagreement with that statement from a scientific standpoint. You can’t have any scientific hypothesis that allows no possibility of being false.
quote:It isn't some thing, let alone some thing called nothing. The question "what is not anything at all" is meaningless. The only possible answer is "mu." You reify nothing without justificaiton.
Originally posted by Grokesx:
And what is not anything at all, if not nothing?
quote:It's so obviously wrong it's not worth saying, you mean.
All this is so obvious as not worth saying.
quote:Finally, something on which we agree.
My point... oh fuck it, who cares what my point is.
quote:For fuck's sake, man, I said a couple of posts ago that I was mistaken in conflating the two things and endeavoured to clarify. Obviously not well enough.
You said that all questions about imaginary entities were incoherent (here). I have to say that isn't easy to discuss things with someone who keeps backpedalling like this
quote:In other words, your response takes the form of a 'tu quoque'. OK. So let's agree that we cannot make statements about that which we can't possibly know concerning God. If that is what we all agree, then we cannot make confident statements such as "God created the universe ex nihilo". All that we can say is that we don't know. Which goes back to my point in the OP.
Originally posted by Dafyd
You're rather quick to accuse me and IngoB of making statements about things we can't possibly know. Yet here you're making a confident statement about what 'infinite mind implies', which, again, you can't possibly know.
quote:I never said that God could 'know' non-actualised possibilities. I said that "all possibilities exist in the mind of God". The verbs 'think' and 'know' are not synonyms.
There's a whole lot of argument about whether God can know non-actualised possibilities. E.g. if you suppose free will can God know what I would have chosen under different circumstances? What makes a statement about non-actualised possibilities true?
quote:Well, information does exist independently of God, in the sense that information is not God. For example, God's knowledge of Himself is not a definition of God, but rather it is something that eternally co-exists with God as a possession of God. The same can be true of other information, including hypotheses and conjecture. I think that I am making a pretty strong inference when I say that the eternal God, who possesses an infinite mind, is cognisant of every possibility that obeys the laws of logic. So I doubt that God can envisage a square circle, but I am sure that He can imagine an alternative history of England if, say, William had lost the Battle of Hastings.
The general conclusion is that the only way God can know non-actualised possibilities is if they in some way 'exist' independently of God. Which would contravene the definition that God is the personal creator of everything that 'exists'.
quote:You can say whatever you like. I'm all for freedom of speech. Whether it makes any sense to anyone else is another matter, of course...
I think I'm entitled to make claims about what I personally am arguing. Besides, I went on to (try to) explain what I'm arguing in the subsequent paragraph.
quote:You say that the shape of the cube does not exist, but only the plasticine. But on that basis, where is your evidence that the plasticine exists?
Do shapes exist?
You have a lump of plasticine and you make it into a cube. Do you now have the plasticine and a cube as well? No. You just have the plasticine which is in the shape of the cube. If we talk about the shape we can reduce that to talk about the plasticine. We don't need both shape and plasticine lying around in our ontology.
Does that mean shapes don't exist? That would be a misunderstanding too. Both 'shapes exist' and 'shapes don't exist' are misstatements, misunderstandings of what talk about shapes is talk about.
Ditto thoughts. Talk about thoughts is talk about people thinking. When I say thoughts are not something, what I mean is thoughts are not things. They're activities. Nor are activities things. You can't apply phrases that apply to things to thoughts. You can't talk about being 'made of thought' in the way you can talk about being 'made of matter'. The word 'thought' does not function in that language game. But that doesn't mean people don't think.
quote:Don't call something 'nonsense' which you have made little effort to understand. In fact, you've destroyed your own objection by your own comments. You acknowledge that God can act in time and space and yet that is the very basis of my analogy.
That is nonsense. It is meaningless to say that an omnipresent being can take a journey, just as it is meaningless to say that an omniscient being can learn something new.
You I hope concede that when the Bible says God changed God's mind it is not speaking literally. Just so, when the Bible says God walked in the garden the Bible is not speaking literally.
It is true to say that God can act in time and space if by that you mean that God can act on objects in time and space. It isn't true if you mean God can be in one particular point in time and space as opposed to another.
quote:I am very happy to be less bold and confident in my claims, if others would kindly reciprocate. In other words, give up the bold and confident (and I would say highly presumptuous) claim of creatio ex nihilo. I find it astonishing - even an example of cognitive dissonance - that those who appeal to the mystery of God and criticise the presumption of others when trying to understand God, insist on the truth of their highly speculative theories concerning the divine. It's a rather fascinating phenomenon of human psychology, commonly known as "having your cake and eating it"!
That contingent information is caused by God is a claim about contingent information and its relation to a God whom we posit as the creator of that information. You, however, are boldly making claims about the contents and inner states of God's mind. You as a human being do not have perfect insight into created human minds. As human beings, even our own introspective knowledge is imperfect. And yet you are claiming knowledge or understanding of what God introspects.
Human beings do not and cannot have any concept of God's knowledge beyond bare analogy. All we know is that it makes no sense to deny that God knows something for any true something. It is true likewise that we don't have any concept of God's causation - but again we do know that it makes no sense to deny that God caused something where that something has contingent existence.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:You say that the shape of the cube does not exist
Originally posted by Dafyd
Does that mean shapes don't exist? That would be a misunderstanding too. Both 'shapes exist' and 'shapes don't exist' are misstatements, misunderstandings of what talk about shapes is talk about.
quote:I disagree with you. The cosmological argument for the existence of God does not require the idea of absolute novelty in creation, unless you hold to a hyper-reductionist view of 'God' as a pure substance without parts - and therefore without thought. Such a view of God may satisfy the "Cloud of Unknowing" mystics and the Greek philosophers, but it is far removed from the biblical conception of God, and can easily be debunked.
Originally posted by IngoB
To make this clear once more (for indeed I must have explained this half a dozen times by now), the very process of the cosmological argument that leads to a proof of God absolutely requires "creatio ex nihilo". We are not attaching some concept there based on a whim. We are stating precisely the condition that allowed us to deduce the existence of God, namely that nothing else than God could still be left at the point of creation. We knowexactly one thing about how God created, thanks to this argument: namely that it was from nothing. If that is not true, then this argument for the existence of God fails. You have not shown that it fails, and there is absolutely no need for me to fill in some further "mechanistic" gap. There is no gap in the logic of the argument, just because it does not deliver all the information that you would like to have.
quote:It is, admittedly, very difficult to have any respect for the intellect of someone who uses words like 'certainty' and phrases like 'plain wrong' when promoting an idea which is thoroughly illogical. You have no idea how something can derive from nothing, even with the action of an agent, and yet someone who questions this 'idea' (if I can dignify the theory with that term) is 'condemned' as a heretic and non-Christian.
But we do understand that God must create from nothing, and we can hence declare with certainty not only that people who think otherwise are heretics or non-Christians, which is a point about Christian doctrine, but also that they are plain wrong, which is a point about metaphysics.
quote:The metaphor you're using seems to me to be imagining something like this: Memories are something like a card-index. The cards are stored somewhere and when we remember something what happens is that we start up some mechanism that retrieves a particular card.
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
But I am still not sure what you are saying about the ontology of information.
Whatever you are saying, all I can say is that information definitely exists as something, because I find it impossible to believe that the function of the memory is acting on 'nothing'. Information is stored and retrieved by a mechanism in the brain. That mechanism must be acting on something real (even though that 'something' is not necessarily material).
quote:
I never said that God could 'know' non-actualised possibilities. I said that "all possibilities exist in the mind of God". The verbs 'think' and 'know' are not synonyms.
quote:'Think' and 'know' are not synonyms, but 'know' and 'is cognisant of' are synonyms. So are you sayign that God knows possibilities that obey the laws of logic, or not?
Well, information does exist independently of God, in the sense that information is not God. For example, God's knowledge of Himself is not a definition of God, but rather it is something that eternally co-exists with God as a possession of God. The same can be true of other information, including hypotheses and conjecture. I think that I am making a pretty strong inference when I say that the eternal God, who possesses an infinite mind, is cognisant of every possibility that obeys the laws of logic. So I doubt that God can envisage a square circle, but I am sure that He can imagine an alternative history of England if, say, William had lost the Battle of Hastings.
quote:I do not think you can say God is fully present in the cloud of fire and cloud in that way. Compare the wind, earthquake, and fire that appeared before the still small voice. God is not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire. But was God therefore absent? No. God is 'in' the still small voice and in the pillar of fire, but not in the wind and earthquake, only in some non-spatial sense.
For example, let us assume that God did actually lead the Israelites out of Egypt by a pillar of fire and cloud (I certainly believe He did, but even if He did not, this is something He certainly could have done). Was God fully present in those phenomena? The answer is yes.
quote:I certainly can't agree that, since if one fact is contingent upon a second fact, that implies that the second fact is itself contingent - might have been otherwise. And God's existence is not contingent.
As for contingent knowledge: I assume that you agree that God's knowledge of Himself is contingent on His own existence? Would you say that God created the knowledge of Himself?
quote:The cosmological argument for the existence of God is a part of Greek philosophy. The Bible doesn't engage in any arguments for the existence of God. Paul merely says that God can be known from creation without saying how. (The obvious candidate that Paul might have been thinking of would be Greek philosophy.)
The cosmological argument for the existence of God does not require the idea of absolute novelty in creation, unless you hold to a hyper-reductionist view of 'God' as a pure substance without parts - and therefore without thought. Such a view of God may satisfy the "Cloud of Unknowing" mystics and the Greek philosophers, but it is far removed from the biblical conception of God, and can easily be debunked.
quote:Out of curiosity: does the Bible say anything about the existence of God?
Dafyd: The Bible doesn't engage in any arguments for the existence of God.
quote:Is it? The way I read this verse, it is only saying that the invisible qualities of God can be understood through His visible creation. But maybe I'm deranging an argument I'm not taking part of.
EtymologicalEvangelical: Romans 1:20 is the argument from design
quote:'Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine wisdom, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.'
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Romans 1:20 is the argument from design, which of course applies to the question of God's existence.
