CREATION OUT OF NOTHING

Process Studies, 2000

This article shows that and how we can retain valuable process insights, such as that God is necessarily creative, social, loving, and embodied in some actual universe, and still affirm creation ex nihilo for our universe. Without relating his metaphysics to recent developments in scientific cosmology. Most philosophical-minded process theologians have not been able to conceive of a way to get around the principle that all realities are partly created out of prior actualities and still preserve God’s necessary creativity, sociality, love, and embodiment. I explain that and how it can be done quite successfully by employing concepts that are quite readily available in contemporary Big Bang astrophysics and cosmology, and that reasons given by process thinkers for repudiating creation ex nihilo can be bypassed. In developing these points, I also show how process thought can relate its insights to contemporary scientific Big Bang cosmology, and that traditional process thought contains elements out of which a process understanding of creation ex nihilo can be constructed.

A Summary of, and Commentary on, the Main Conclusions of David Berlinski's Analysis of the Delusions of Contemporary Science, especially as regards the "Big Bang" Theory

Zygon, 2009

This paper explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to “Nothing” in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing or causing it, is past-finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative multiverses, many-worlds, and pocket universes do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Vilenkin, and Hartle and Hawking, which claim the universe came from “literally” Nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (e.g. their “nothing” is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (e.g. physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine can only infer a Creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of Creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. But rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, e.g. the problem of evil.

This is the story of the Universe and Life ... ... arranged in 92 chapters as Three Testaments to honour the supreme achievements of men and women worldwide who together have been unravelling the secrets of the origins of the world and of living things. Testaments One (Universe) and Two (Life) constitute a true ‘Genesis without Myth’. Testament Three continues with what is known of the prehistory of humankind and it leads into known history up to the present day. Together they attest to truths as gained by observation, instrumentation, insight, intelligence, reason, and the application of physical laws, experimental facts and the formulation of harmonious, logical models. In defining the latest wisdom, they spell out the principles of this wondrous Universe. Hence, this New Bible is a repository of knowledge, a witness to erudition and enlightenment, a work of rational explanation. It is testimony and eulogy, in praise of high scholarship and logic—a covenant of improving exactness with the passage of time. Yet despite the successes here narrated about humankind—well enriched by high intelligence and a genetically promising future—the volume draws to a close (Epilogue, page 305) by sadly asking “How did Homo sapiens in the course of 160,000 years of progress get itself into the current predicament?”—referring to the amalgam of authoritarian religions, undemocratic governments, inequality of the sexes, reckless overpopulation, and irresponsible worldwide waste on land and ocean? The authors are many. They number millions—chiefly scientists probing the mysteries of the Universe and the origins of Life, and prehistorians, ethical historians and well-informed reporters in consideration of the triumphs, events and disasters of humankind. The assembler of these facts has gathered manifest truths from the works of the most learned and talented people. The result is a compendium of knowledge annotated with honourable intentions for the common good. Socrates: “There is only one good, Knowledge, and only one evil, Ignorance.” Jacob Bronowski: “In every age there is a turning point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world.” Ascent of Man, Chapter 1, 1973. René Descartes: “We buy the right to reject only with the effort we make to understand”.

A Discussion of Chance, Fate and Freedom, Human and Divine, in the Context of Modern Cosmologies.

According to renowned British physicist Stephen W. Hawking, " We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is? " i These questions have had a profound impact on the human race. Many ancient traditions across space and time have stories, in some form or another, pertaining to the origin of this world. We often call these narratives creation stories. Notable in literature are the monotheistic religion of the Jews, the Gilgamesh tablet often known as the Gilgamesh Epic, and the Popol Vuh for the Guatemalan Mayan community. These ancient literatures are best known for their sequential narration of the creation account and the origin of humanity by an act of divine power. This is a theistic interpretation of creation, or what is generally known today as Creationism. Consistently, theistic accounts of creation have maintained a cosmological understanding of the universe as purposefully created by an intelligent designer. That is to say, God created the universe, and He made it out of nothing (ex nihilo).

2019

The Big Bang Theory refers to the beginning of the Universe, originating from a singularity, a theory so far verified by the observational data. In accordance with this theory, the Universe, space and time have a beginning. Similar is the position of the Christian writers of the early Christian Church, who support the ex nihilo - ἐκ μὴ ὄντος (ek me ontos = from the ‘non-being’) creation of the world through the divine ‘energy’, with the two theories converging to the fact that space and time have a beginning. But according to the Father of the Eastern Church Basilius the Great and the Greek Christian philosopher, theologian and natural scientist John Philoponus, the ‘non-being’ does not represent ‘nothing’ but something beyond space and time, inaccessible to human senses. Parallel, though not coincident, in contemporary Cosmology is supported the hypothesis of the existence of the ‘false vacuum’, an imperceptible state before the Big Bang. A major question that philosophers as well as modern scholars have considered over the years is whether our Universe has a beginning. Some Christian scholars considered that the Universe had a principle reigning exclusively in the divine will and envisaged its creation as a transition from the ‘non-being’ to being. In modern Astrophysics, space and time originate from the Big Bang. The principal aim of this work is to investigate the common points between the early Christian version of the creation of the Universe and modern Cosmology. Hence we will present the main scientific data supporting the Big Bang Theory. Also, will be discussed the first Christian version of the creation of the Cosmos from the ‘non-being’, being interpreted as a state inaccessible to human senses. At the end, there is a discussion about the false vacuum from which our visible Universe originated, according to the theory of inflation complementing Big Bang theory.