What is wrong with this reasoning?
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Original Question
Bill (B), is a strong believer in God
Joe (J), is an atheist
B - God created entirety. Absolutely everything. Nothing existed before God.
J - Nothing? No matter, no energy, no particles, just unbounded void?
B - Yes.
J - How is it logically possible to turn unbounded void into matter/energy, without first adding something? Bear in mind, literally nothing existed that could be added.
B - God can do anything.
(1) J - OK, granted, God can do anything, provided it is LOGICALLY possible. What you are tell me is that God made [unbounded void] = NOT[unbounded void], That violates the Law of Non-Contradiction.
B - Logic does not apply to God.
J - can God create a square circle?
B - No.
J - correct, because that would be to create something that is both [a square] AND [NOT a square]. In other words he cannot violate the Law of Non-Contradiction. Just as in (1) above.
Answers
3Mostly this is a failure to understand the two concepts of "something" and "nothing." Of the two, my experience is "nothing" is the most difficult to comprehend.
Hi, Jim!
Bill says that nothing existed before God. Joe asks if “nothing” refers to unbounded void. Bill answers yes. What? Bill is saying that unbounded void existed before God existed? Something tells me that Bill wasn’t thinking clearly and just agreed to something that he did not really mean to. It seems both men unwittingly went along with a reification fallacy regarding “nothing”, treating it as a boundless void preceding God in existence. Actually, “nothing” is a universal quantifier. What Bill probably wanted to say is that it is false that something preceded God in existence. Of course, that clarification ought to change the course of the conversation. Note also that theism does not maintain that absolutely everything is created by God. As Walker pointed out, such a claim would absurdly apply to God (God created God.)
Thank you, Jim.
From, Kaiden
The contradiction is in the very first sentence. The support arguments are just rhetoric, ad hoc rescue, amazing familiarity, and, of course, theology.
B - God created entirety. Absolutely everything. Nothing existed before God.
Alrighty then, if God existed that would constitute something. So the claim is goofy right off the bat.
Nothing excludes creation ex nihilo. If by “nothing” is meant that there is no physical, mental, platonic, or nonphysical entity of any kind, then there can be no God or gods, which means that there cannot be anything outside of nothing from which to create something.
This negates the Judeo Christian theological argument that God created the universe ex nihilo, or “out of nothing,” based on the English translation of Genesis 1:1 that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
This is misleading. Recent scholarship has suggested that the Hebrew word for “creation” in Genesis 1:1 is bara ( ברא )—a verb that more accurately translated means to “separate” or “divide.” Genesis 1:1 should read, “In the beginning, God separated the heavens and the earth.” Separated from what is not indicated.
Furthermore, there is literal, biblical, and extra-biblical evidence that Yahweh fought the Babylonian serpent demon sidekicks of Tiamat named Tohu and Bohu and created the universe from their slain carcasses. So, ironically, even in the Biblical account of creation Yahweh created the universe from something even though they fudged a bit on the Babylonian roots.
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