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To: EnderWiggins
Excuse me while I go back a bit and clear up some confusion:

Of course that is certainly something that was not created. We both agreed almost a week ago that ex nihilo, nihil fit.

I think all natural things in the universe follow this principle. But I happen to think not everything in super nature does. But when I brought it up, I was not asserting what I believed but trying to reach a common starting point. I had said:

Everybody seems to agree that nothing comes from nothing. Before the Big Bang theory, naturalists simply considered the universe to be eternal. Super naturalists were divided on the point.

But the Big Bang evidence suggests that the entire universe and all its laws and physical properties did not not simply always exist. It doesn't prove this absolutely, but it gives us a point at which it is hard for any science to look beyond.

Strictly speaking of coarse, the super naturalist views the "nothing comes from nothing" a natural law only. The same way as they think gravity applies to nature but not necessarily to the super natural. Sorry for the confusion this caused.

161 posted on 02/20/2010 9:47:59 PM PST by AndyTheBear
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To: AndyTheBear
"I think all natural things in the universe follow this principle. But I happen to think not everything in super nature does. But when I brought it up, I was not asserting what I believed but trying to reach a common starting point."

All that is fine and good. The problem is that your parsing here between things that are "natural" and things that are in "super nature" is arbitrary and thus ultimately meaningless.

It is the excuse that religionists in general and you in particular use to ignore either reason or evidence. Instead, you throw up your hands and willfully abandon both in favor of "magical thinking." While people tend to maintain some level of "magical thinking" associated with their religious beliefs even as adults, operationally most of us outgrow it by late childhood. We certainly do not lead our day to day lives depending on miracle and magic. Instead we assume that cause and effect operates and that what we have deductively learned about reality is likely to be true.

This dichotomy you continue to embrace regarding the characteristics of nature vs. super-nature is the key reason why it is impossible to conclude God from either evidence or reason, and why no argument that even pretends to begin from the premise that nothing comes from nothing can lead to any conclusion other than an eternal universe.

"Everybody seems to agree that nothing comes from nothing. Before the Big Bang theory, naturalists simply considered the universe to be eternal. Super naturalists were divided on the point."

In all candor, why should anyone give any serious consideration to what super-naturalists believed on that point? But worse, how would anyone imagine that the abandonment of ex nihilo, nihil fit by some segment of the "super naturalist" community would be any more effective at driving a conclusion of God than the already failed argument from an uncaused cause?

I have shown a willingness (you might have noticed) to allow you any starting assumptions you choose. But each time that has failed to work out for you, you come running back to the assumptions we had both seemed to agree on and demand a "do over." By now I would have thought you'd notice the pattern and realize that the starting assumptions are not your problem. Your problem is that your desired conclusion is an entity that has no advantage or explanatory power over an eternal universe. And it has vastly less evidence.

Think about it. If you begin with the assumption that God is uncreated, then you have conceded that something can be uncreated. Okay... if God can be uncreated, why can't the universe itself be uncreated? After all, we actually have evidence for the existence of a universe.

If you begin with the assumption that something can come from nothing after all, then you have conceded that effects can spontaneously arise without any cause. So again, okay. If God can arise out of nothing, why can't the universe itself arise out of nothing? After all, we actually have evidence for the existence of a universe.

No matter where you start from, the problem that you invariable have to face is the two ultimate explanations that are offered; one naturalistic, the other super-naturalistic. Why would the God explanation be superior in any way to the eternal universe explanation, when the amount of evidence for each is not within light years of parity?

"But the Big Bang evidence suggests that the entire universe and all its laws and physical properties did not not simply always exist. It doesn't prove this absolutely, but it gives us a point at which it is hard for any science to look beyond."

Your latter sentence is true. Your first is not. The Big Bang gives no more evidence that "the entire universe and all its laws and physical properties did not not simply always exist" than any point on a line is evidence that the line does not persist on either side of the point. You are arguing in a circle again.

"Strictly speaking of coarse, the super naturalist views the "nothing comes from nothing" a natural law only. The same way as they think gravity applies to nature but not necessarily to the super natural. Sorry for the confusion this caused."

I gotta tell you... I suspect you are even wrong on that point. Either that or you are IMHO certainly not an orthodox Christian by any measure. I will not speak for all the Christians here, and if one or more would like to leap in and correct me I'd appreciate it. But the orthodox view IIRC is that even in the super-natural realm nothing comes from nothing. God cuts the Gordian knot of that maxim not by violating it, but by being eternal and uncreated. Everything comes from something... ultimately the eternal God that did not "come from anything" simply because He always was.

But then again, my resulting question is why, if you have already conceded that something can be eternal and uncreated, why not the universe?
162 posted on 02/22/2010 10:01:28 AM PST by EnderWiggins
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