nothing-1394843_1280

 

A different kind of Cosmological Argument.

At age 19 Jonathan Edwards wrote an article entitled “Of being”. This was a short, but incisive article dealing with matters of being.

He postulates that perfect nothingness is conceptually impossible. For example if one is to attempt to think about perfect nothing, they normally imagine black “space” devoid of light. This however is not perfect nothing, as it is something that the mind is conceptualizing. Further Edwards asserts that perfect nothing is the negation of all propositions.

logic-1630657_1280

 

Either nothing existed which would negate all geometry,any universal law, and any proportion whatsoever or everything existed in God’s mind. The former part of this proposition assumes that the atheist must accept either the eternality of the universe or accept the negation of all propositions before all matter and propositions came into being. If that were true, then the laws of physics *appeared ex post facto which seems absurd or they were already in existence which negates the proposition.

p: absolute nothing existed
q: no propositions existed
r: all propositions present in God’s mind
p –> q (r v p)
~p :. r

In a naturalistic model, the ontology of immaterial laws must be thought of as an abstraction from the ontology of the material universe. In other words creation ex-nihilo via a naturalistic framework must include laws that are abstract from the processes that they govern.

In a theistic model, propositions and laws are existent a priori as they exist in God’s mind. The material world is fashioned in response to the immaterial laws that already exist. This seems the to be the only plausible way to conceptualize creation ex-nihilo.