The definition of nothingness exactly

[Randolpin]

Again if we say that our universe is eternal it can be still defeated by philosophy. Because the infinity of past events doesn't hold on reality( William Lane Craig, Hilbert).

Also our universe is contingent because it cannot exist. There are other possibilities of what our universe would look like. And after all, why this is the type of the universe that exist and not those other possibilities? Again even you suspect cosmological evidences you can't still avoid the philosophical arguments for the finity of universe.

13 minutes ago, studiot said:

So are you saying there is no reference for the definition you stated?

It was just something you made up?

Reference1:

The argument that Parmenides offers is that for us to think about something or talk about something, there must be something. But nothing, by definition, is not something. Therefore, we cannot think about it or talk about it, and should not. In other words, we cannot properly use the concept; and when we don't, things like "coming into being" and "perishing." which require non-existence, cease to exist.

Reference2: Reasonablefaith.org website

According to William Lane Craig questioner:

You run the Cosmological argument as follows

(1) Whatever begins to exist must have a cause.

(2) The universe began to exist.

(3) Therefore the universe had a cause.

It is the first premise that confuses me. The support offered for (1) seems to undermine ex nihilocreation.  When pressed to defend (1) you say things like “being cannot come from non-being”, “something cannot come from nothing”, etc.  So (1) is true because (A) it is not possible for something to come from nothing.  You say that (A) is evident and call it “a first principle of metaphysics.”  What is the sense of “possibility” here?  It cannot mean physical possibility, for clearly natural laws will not apply to the creation event.  As far as I can see it must mean something like logical possibility. But if it is logically impossible for something to come from nothing, then it is not possible for God to make something come from nothing.  For surely God cannot violate logical laws, can he?

It seems that what you really want to say is something like (B) it is not possible for something to come from nothing—psst, without a cause.  But there is nothing of the self evidence and intuitive force in B as there is in A.  It is not the something coming from nothing uncaused that we find puzzling; it is simply the something coming from nothing.

This is evidenced by your own puzzlement over the ex nihilo doctrine.   When I see you pressed on this point the argument seems to become abductive.  You say something like “I do not know how God could have created the universe out of nothing, I only know that it is doubly absurd to say that it happened without cause.”  But there is no double absurdity, there is simply absurdity-and both explanations are absurd.  What is required is that God is a better explanation than an event without causation (if indeed that is the only other option).  I don’t know exactly what constitutes the necessary and sufficient conditions for a good explanation, but I think that it has something to do with removing confusion.  That is, a good explanation should leave us less confused about the phenomena.  But if it is confounding to the point of absurdity that something should leap into existence out of nothing, is it really any less absurd if someone is standing over it and “saying let there be...”.

I don’t know.

Furthermore, this is a radically different kind of causation.  I take it that whatever notion of causation is involved it must be something like efficient causation.  When we observe efficient causation we observe something acting on another thing to bring about some result.  I think that I can understand what it means, for example, for a person to act on a block to cause a statue.  I think that this is a perfectly intelligible notion of causation. But what would it be for a person to act upon nothing in such a way as to bring about an effect.  Efficient causation as creation or ‘bringing about’ is an acting upon a thing.  So whatever causation you have in mind here is radically different than anything we usually understand by the term.  And the less I understand this notion of causation, the less inclined I find myself inclined to consider the God hypothesis to be the better explanation.

WLC Response:

In getting at your complex question, William, let me first review three reasons I have given for believing the first premiss of the kalamcosmological argument.  First and foremost, the causal premiss is rooted in the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing.  To suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious metaphysics and to resort to magic.  Second, if things really could come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything and everything do not come into existence uncaused from nothing.  Finally, the first premiss is constantly confirmed in our experience, which provides atheists who are scientific naturalists with the strongest of motivations to accept it.

My first reason corresponds to your

(A)  It is not possible for something to come from nothing. 

I think that the principle ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing nothing comes)is as certain as anything in philosophy and that no rational person sincerely doubts it. But this principle does not in any way contradict the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo(creation out of nothing), as the medieval thinkers who espoused both realized.  For only in the case of creation is there a cause which brings the relevant object into being.

Your first question is, “What is the sense of ‘possibility’ here?”  The answer is “metaphysical possibility.”  This is a modality in between physical possibility and strict logical possibility and is often called “broad logical possibility” by contemporary philosophers.  To illustrate, it is strictly logically possible that “The Prime Minister is a prime number” (there is no logical contradiction here); but, notwithstanding, such a thing is metaphysically impossible (incapable of actualization).  There are all sorts of truths—like “Everything that has a shape has a size,” “Nothing can be red all over and green all over,” “No event precedes itself,” etc.—which are not strictly logically necessary but are, I think, metaphysically necessary.  I think that the first premiss of the kalam argument is a metaphysically necessary truth.

As for your

(B) It is not possible for something to come from nothing without a cause,

I think it’s logically equivalent to (A).  They entail each other.  Just consider:  suppose someone proposed to refute  (A) by saying, “Something can come from nothing if it has a cause!”  The proponent of (A) would rightly think that the other person hadn’t understood him.  If something has a cause, then it doesn’t come from nothing.  To come from nothing is to lack all causal conditions, period.  Think of it this way:  if something comes into being uncaused from nothing, then obviously it comes into being from nothing  (B→A).  And if something comes into being from nothing, then it comes into being uncaused from nothing (A→B).  So (A) and (B) are logically equivalent.  So either  (A) or (B) can be used to support premiss (1).

Now it’s correct that two logically equivalent statements can have different intuitive force.  I exploit that in my statement of the first premiss of the moral argument.  It’s logically equivalent to say “If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist” or “If objective moral values exist, then God exists,” but the first is more intuitively obvious.  So it may be more effective dialectically to use the more intuitive formulation.

Now is the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo absurd?  No, for it doesn’t contradict (A).  The universe has a creative cause.  By contrast the atheist who, like my friend Quentin Smith, asserts that the universe just sprang into being without any causal conditions whatsoever does contradict (A).

We can get some clarity on the question by recalling Aristotle’s distinction between an efficient cause and a material cause.  An efficient cause is something that produces its effect in being; a material cause is the stuff out of which something is made.  Michelangelo is the efficient cause the statue David, while the chunk of marble is its material cause.

If something popped into being out of nothing, it would lack  any causal conditions whatsoever, efficient or material.  If God creates something ex nihilo, then it lacks only a material cause.   This is, admittedly, hard to conceive, but  if coming into being without a material cause is absurd, then coming into being with neither a material cause nor an efficient cause is, as I say, doubly absurd, that is, twice as hard to conceive.  So it’s not open to the non-theist confronted with the beginning of the universe to say that while creatio ex nihilo is impossible a spontaneous origin ex nihilo is.

If I may speak for you, it seems to me that what you’re really arguing is the following:  The justification which I offer in support of premiss (1), namely (A), actually supports a stronger premiss, namely,

1´.  Whatever begins to exist must have both an efficient and a material cause.

But then the kalam argument would look like this:

1´.  Whatever begins to exist must have both an efficient and a material cause.

2.  The universe began to exist.

3.  Therefore, the universe had both an efficient and a material cause.

Not only is (3) incompatible with creatio ex nihilo, as you point out, but even worse, it is incoherent.  For the universe is here defined as the whole of material reality.  The whole of material reality cannot have a prior material cause because if it did, then it did not really begin to exist!  So the person who accepts (1´) cannot accept (2).  Now you evidently do accept (A), since, as you put it, things can’t “leap into existence out of nothing,” and therefore you also accept (1´).   So the premiss you really reject is (2).  Matter and energy, or the universe, must be eternal.

What I want to challenge is your justification for the stronger claim  (1´).   Why think that efficient causation without material causation is impossible?  We’ve seen that (A) doesn’t, in fact,  justify (1´).  What (A) justifies is that there has to be some sort of cause of the thing that begins, but there’s no reason to think that it must be a material cause.  In your final paragraph you appeal to our normal experience of seeing efficient causes acting in tandem with material causes as justification for (1´).  But why think that this common concatenation must always be the case? 

Perhaps it would be helpful here to think of cases where we could have efficient causation without material causation.  I’ve been working heavily on the topic of abstract objects like numbers, sets, propositions, and so on.  Many philosophers believe that these immaterial objects exist necessarily and eternally.  But there are many abstract objects which seem to exist contingently and non-eternally, for example, the equator, the center of mass of the solar system, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and so forth.  None of these is a physical object.  Tolstoy’s novel, for example, is not identical to any of its printed exemplars, for these could all be destroyed and replaced by new books.  Nor can Beethoven’s Fifth be identified with any particular series of ink marks or any performance of the symphony.  Now these things all began to exist:  the equator, for example, didn’t exist before the earth did.  But if they began to exist, did they have a cause or did they come into being out of just nothing?  (Notice that it makes sense to ask this question even though these entities are immaterial and so have no material cause.)  Many philosophers would say that they did indeed have a cause: it was Tolstoy, for example,  who created Anna Karenina.  So in cases such as these (and they are legion), we do, indeed, have instances of efficient causation without material causation.  You may not agree that such abstract objects really exist;  but I think we have to say that the view defended by our philosophical colleagues is a coherent one. 

The examples of literary and musical creation are suggestive.  Could God have analogously thought the universe into being, just as Tolstoy created Anna Karenina?  It’s a provocative idea. 

You say that appealing to God as the cause of the universe may not be the better explanation.  “Better than what?”  I ask.  If the alternative is spontaneous coming into being out of nothing, I think we both agree that’s impossible.  The only recourse for the atheist is then to deny premiss (2) of the kalam argument.  But if we have good evidence for the beginning of the universe, as I think we do, then the God alternative is looking better all the time.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Randolpin

[Strange]

4 minutes ago, Randolpin said:

Again if we say that our universe is eternal it can be still defeated by philosophy. Because the infinity of past events doesn't hold on reality

I have no idea what that means.

5 minutes ago, Randolpin said:

Also our universe is contingent because it cannot exist.

And yet it does.

5 minutes ago, Randolpin said:

There are other possibilities of what our universe would look like. And after all, why this is the type of the universe that exist and not those other possibilities?

You have tried this before. There are all sorts of possible reasons. You believe it is because your god chose to make it that way. But there is no rational reason to believe that.

And why did she choose that way and not a different way? You cannot answer, so it isn't really any sort of answer or explanation at all. You have just moved from "we don't know why the universe is the way it is" to "we don't know why a mythical god made it the way it is".

Not exactly helpful as an explanation; it is still l"we don't know". But at least with science, there is a chance we could find out more and get a better answer. Whereas you have stopped any further enquiry and discovery by saying "thats just the way it is".

[Randolpin]

1 minute ago, Strange said:

 

You have tried this before. There are all sorts of possible reasons. You believe it is because your god chose to make it that way. But there is no rational reason to believe that.

And why did she choose that way and not a different way? You cannot answer, so it isn't really any sort of answer or explanation at all. You have just moved from "we don't know why the universe is the way it is" to "we don't know why a mythical god made it the way it is".

Not exactly helpful as an explanation; it is still l"we don't know". But at least with science, there is a chance we could find out more and get a better answer. Whereas you have stopped any further enquiry and discovery by saying "thats just the way it is".

No. This is already answered in philosophy like Leibniz. The answer is that this is the best possible world that God could create.

[studiot]

Randolphin, thank you for your long reply.

That wasn't so difficult was it?

And it will help me understand where you are coming from.

 

Unfortunately it seems to be as I thought.

You have built two edifices founded on fallacies.

 

1) That because you think that because something has a beginning it must have a creator is a fallacy which I addressed here.

You need to answer this, but please ask if you have trouble with any of the English I am using.

I have given two counterexamples of how something might have a beginning but no creator.

 

 

 

On 22/02/2018 at 2:18 PM, studiot said:

 

 

2)

To create is a transitive verb which therefore requires a creator. No problem with that.

But even the authors of the Bible and past Christian material understood this.
That is why for instance the early authors wrote the hymn line "Begotton not created"

But the existance of creators and creations does not mean that other methods/modes (non creative) of appearance are precluded.

For instance

a) spontaneous appearance

or

b) Happenstance

 

Also your definition of nothing is inadequate.

I gave an example of how either everything is nothing (if that means anything)

or

something also exists and then nothing must have properties.

 

 

 

On 22/02/2018 at 2:18 PM, studiot said:

I have two simple points of logic to make.

1)

Given that nothing 'exists' (or existed if you prefer) and that something exists it cannot be held that nothing has no properties since there must be somewhere (even if only in my mind) where nothing exists and also somewhere (else) where something exists. So nothing has the property that it shares a boundary with something.

 

 

 

So over to you

Edited February 26, 2018 by studiot

[swansont]

23 minutes ago, Randolpin said:

 Reference2: Reasonablefaith.org website

According to William Lane Craig questioner:

You run the Cosmological argument as follows

(1) Whatever begins to exist must have a cause.

(2) The universe began to exist.

(3) Therefore the universe had a cause.

It is the first premise that confuses me.  

One must note that it is a premise, i.e. a condition under which one draws conclusions, if the premise is true. But there is no evidence presented to support the premise being true. If the premise is false, the conclusions drawn from it are invalid.

[Strange]

20 minutes ago, Randolpin said:

No. This is already answered in philosophy like Leibniz.

He was wrong.

[DrP]

1 hour ago, Randolpin said:

That is why I posted this topic in this forum because it's foundation is on metaphysics. I think we can have disagreement for the metaphysical nothing because you don't believe it. It is in fact what metaphysics suggest. It is metaphysical. If you don't rely on intuition or philosophy and you prefer more on empiricism then this topic will not go on.

I never said I did not believe in a metaphysical nothing. I said you do not know what was before T=0....  you do not know it was a metaphysical nothing before T=0, how could you?   It might have been 'nothing' as we know it, but I doubt it - how would anyone possibly know? Even if it was nothing - you can't know how whatever happened happened or anything to do with the mechanisms of it as we weren't there and have no data or machines to record data about the event or pre event.    I do not believe the universe just popped into being out of nothing.  Something very big happened at T=0.  I have my own speculations but they are most likely wrong and I am not an expert anyway. I have read what scientists believe the hot dense state was aome speculations as to how it was formed etc...  but you have to accept that we can't know everything.  Also, and I don't really feel I need to say this, but just because we do not know what happened you can't just say 'it was god that did it' without any supporting evidence - that is just childish and being honest doesn't do what you think god is proud....  that is the god of the ever shrinking gaps....  which I don't think anyone really believes in.  

[StringJunky]

17 minutes ago, DrP said:

I never said I did not believe in a metaphysical nothing. I said you do not know what was before T=0....  you do not know it was a metaphysical nothing before T=0, how could you?   It might have been 'nothing' as we know it, but I doubt it - how would anyone possibly know? Even if it was nothing - you can't know how whatever happened happened or anything to do with the mechanisms of it as we weren't there and have no data or machines to record data about the event or pre event.    I do not believe the universe just popped into being out of nothing.  Something very big happened at T=0.  I have my own speculations but they are most likely wrong and I am not an expert anyway. I have read what scientists believe the hot dense state was aome speculations as to how it was formed etc...  but you have to accept that we can't know everything.  Also, and I don't really feel I need to say this, but just because we do not know what happened you can't just say 'it was god that did it' without any supporting evidence - that is just childish and being honest doesn't do what you think god is proud....  that is the god of the ever shrinking gaps....  which I don't think anyone really believes in.  

Randolphin is just showing his ignorance of BB physics and the limitations of General Relativity. It's a classic case of a god filling in the gaps.

Edited February 26, 2018 by StringJunky

[koti]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Randolphin is just showing his ignorance of BB physics and the limitations of General Relativity. It's a classic case of a god filling in the gaps.

Exactly. We don’t know something therefore god didit.

[StringJunky]

31 minutes ago, koti said:

Exactly. We don’t know something therefore god didit.

I think this is historical reason why they exist in many people's minds; to explain unknown things.

[koti]

5 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

I think this is historical reason why they exist in many people's minds; to explain unknown things.

This short clip of Feynman speaking reflects my view very accurately:
 

 

[Phi for All]

7 hours ago, Randolpin said:

I am not preaching. I only answer your questions. Please be open minded

Why someone here could be banned when I am arguing with evidences. What is the reason you are banning me. Deep in my heart I am not lying. I only provided evidences and where it leads and I can provide more.

!

Moderator Note

You answer questions with explanations that aren't based on evidence, but rather are based on your personal beliefs. That is NOT evidence that they are valid. It only shows that you believe them to be valid. That's not science, and that's why it's preaching every time you do it.

Please try to answer the questions put to you without resorting to your religion.