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me: That order cannot rise of chaos in an unguided physical (as compared to mathematical) system.

you: Happens all the time; in fact, it can't happen any other way. And I believe this has been explained to you before.

To the contrary, balrog666, I won that debate rather easily because physical reality relies on two guides to the system which do not pre-exist space/time: physical causality and physical laws.

All cosmologies must deal with the context in which space/time (physical causality and physical laws) began. It is not a vacuum but a void: no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no math, no geometry, no logic, no thing.

Again, for emphasis: there is no physical causality in the void.

In math, it is possible to deal with infinities and chaos. But these do not correspond to physical reality without contradiction (Vaas, Hilbert, etc.)

As an example: one could meditate about a line of all possible numbers. Zero would be at the center. Negative numbers would proceed in one direction –1, -2, -3 on to infinity. Positive numbers would proceed in the other direction 1, 2, 3 on to infinity. But if one were to reverse direction by decimal extensions counting from 1 and –1 towards zero, reducing by half (or any percentage less than 100) each time - the number would continually be smaller but the process would never arrive at zero.

The same may be said of decimal extensions in other scenarios (such as the extension of 1/3) but zero is unique because it serves as a placemarker, e.g. 201 means there are no tens. Not that “tens” don’t exist, but for this particular number there are no tens.

But null is much more than a placemarker – it is more like the zero we can identify but not approach. To use the 201 example, if we were to state 2_1 we would be saying that tens do not exist at all.

With regard to physical reality, null is infinite non-existence – empty, void. This is the context of a beginning, of Creation – not merely zero spatial and/or temporal dimensions but null itself – no physical laws, no physical constants, no causality, no energy/matter, no physical object or event. Consequently, no phenomenon, no mathematics, no logic, no reason, no qualia, no autonomy, no language, no universals.

When everything else is removed, at null, “all that there is” is God Himself – thus the beginning and existence is an act of His will. This, IMHO, is the reason so many scientists are not atheists. They’ve thought about it…