What would be the evidence for ex nihilo creation?

[AV1611VET]

Except that it only settles it for you, so you might as well leave the, "I believe it," in there.

No, it applies to you, too --- whether you choose to believe it or not. Just because you may not believe what's written between its covers, doesn't make you exempt.

 

[Chalnoth]

No, it applies to you, too --- whether you choose to believe it or not. Just because you may not believe what's written between its covers, doesn't make you exempt.

No. Because no matter how strongly you believe, it won't suddenly make me believe. It just doesn't work that way.

 

[AV1611VET]

No. Because no matter how strongly you believe, it won't suddenly make me believe. It just doesn't work that way.

I don't think you get the gist of our motto.

It means that whether we believe it or not, it's not going to be any more or less credible. It's like gravity --- I can choose to believe in it, or I can choose not to; but either way, it's not going to make a difference if I step off the Empire State Building.

Gravity says it, that settles it.

 

[Hydra009]

No, it applies to you, too --- whether you choose to believe it or not. Just because you may not believe what's written between its covers, doesn't make you exempt.

Dominism?

 

[Chalnoth]

I don't think you get the gist of our motto.

It means that whether we believe it or not, it's not going to be any more or less credible. It's like gravity --- I can choose to believe in it, or I can choose not to; but either way, it's not going to make a difference if I step off the Empire State Building.

Gravity says it, that settles it.

But the moment you want to declare absolute truth, you have to claim you have evidence for that. Otherwise it is still nothing but your own belief. And thus you should preface it with, "I believe."

 

[Hydra009]

I don't think you get the gist of our motto.

It means that whether we believe it or not, it's not going to be any more or less credible. It's like gravity --- I can choose to believe in it, or I can choose not to; but either way, it's not going to make a difference if I step off the Empire State Building.

Gravity says it, that settles it.

It's a false analogy, since the obvious difference here is that the claim of ex nihilo creation is not detectable in any way remotely like gravity, hence the faith part.

Also, I'd just like to point out that even though a believer may fervently hold a religious belief, it should not be on forced on others. If that believer is entitled to his beliefs, then so is everyone else.

 

[AV1611VET]

But the moment you want to declare absolute truth, you have to claim you have evidence for that. Otherwise it is still nothing but your own belief. And thus you should preface it with, "I believe."

I didn't get that.

 

[AV1611VET]

It's a false analogy, since the obvious difference here is that the claim of ex nihilo creation is not detectable in any way remotely like gravity, hence the faith part.

Also, I'd just like to point out that even though a believer may fervently hold a religious belief, it should not be on forced on others. If that believer is entitled to his beliefs, then so is everyone else.

Like I said --- pick and choose all you want --- it's not going to change a thing.

 

[Nathan Poe]

Like I said --- pick and choose all you want --- it's not going to change a thing.

Right -- it's still mythology.

 

[Tomk80]

This is why God advises us not to go by pure science.

[bible]2 Corinthians 5:7[/bible]

Nice cop-out.

 

[nvxplorer]

It doesn't make sense to say that a complete lack of existence... existed.

Again, I agree --- but only because there's no known way to express that in the English language.

Nothingness cannot be expressed (in any language) because nothingness cannot be conceptualized. Only "something" can be conceptualized and then expressed.

As such, "nothingness" could not leave any evidence. Even if we stumble upon something (note that word) that appears to indicate nothingness, we could not describe it lest it become "something."

"Something out of nothing," while seemingly understandable at first glance, is actually illogical and cannot be comprehended by the mind.

 

[Chalnoth]

Nothingness cannot be expressed (in any language) because nothingness cannot be conceptualized. Only "something" can be conceptualized and then expressed.

As such, "nothingness" could not leave any evidence. Even if we stumble upon something (note that word) that appears to indicate nothingness, we could not describe it lest it become "something."

"Something out of nothing," while seemingly understandable at first glance, is actually illogical and cannot be comprehended by the mind.

I disagree. It could be detected as an abrupt stop in history or reality. And so it's ruled out entirely as a possibility at any point after inflation.

 

[AV1611VET]

"Something out of nothing," while seemingly understandable at first glance, is actually illogical and cannot be comprehended by the mind.

I agree 100%.

 

[RealityCheck]

AV1611, just gonna step outside the original question to ask a related question of you.

Why do you bother asking questions like this?

You ask, what evidence would prove ex nihilo creation? If this question is to be answered seriously, you have to allow for evidence that disproves and contradicts the premise of ex nihilo creation. But you don't. Any evidence that does contradict your chosen premise, you immediately dismiss and state "that contradicts my premise so it must be wrong." So why bother asking the question at all? You could simply reject all evidence to the contrary, and then any evidence that doesn't contradict your premise is what's leftover for you.

You're not out to prove your premise through empirical evidence. You're doing this in reverse, you're stating a premise that you assert "is absolutely true" and then stating that any evidence that agrees with the premise "is real evidence" and anything that contradicts the evidence is "wrong" or "not real."

So why do you bother asking the question?

 

[AV1611VET]

Hi, RealityCheck

Here's my OP:

Some contend that God created the universe ex nihilo (out of nothing) --- could evidence be shown?

You're not out to prove your premise through empirical evidence.

You're right --- I'm not out to prove my premise at all --- that's your job.

You're doing this in reverse, you're stating a premise that you assert "is absolutely true" and then stating that any evidence that agrees with the premise "is real evidence" and anything that contradicts the evidence is "wrong" or "not real."

That's because I've been taught that carbon and radiometric dating methods are unreliable when it comes to dating things beyond a certain point; and rather than have to argue the point with people on here who are much more knowledgeable than I, who would bury me in technospeak, I just dismiss it outright.

When I was growing up, people were carbon-dating skeletons of "hominids" as hundreds of millions of years old, until it was "discovered" that Carbon dating is ineffectual beyond 5730 years.

So now there's this radiometric dating method and all these other dating methods, etc., and it makes me want to puke radioactive isotopes.

If you were to come to my house with two identical rocks, and tell me the rock in your left hand is dated at 2 billion years, and the one in your right hand is dated at 1 billion years, I would tell you that God embedded 2 billion years in the one rock, and 1 billion years in the other.

Same with radioactive elements. If you said this element has been here 10,000 years because its half-life is 20,000 years, then I would tell you that when God created it, it was currently at 16,000 years of half-life. (If I'm saying this right.)

But in any event, all that aside, I believe the Bible teaches ex nihilo Creation, anyway. Evidence for or against notwithstanding.

So why do you bother asking the question?

I simply want to show that there is no such a thing as evidence for ex nihilo creation.

 

[Tomk80]

I simply want to show that there is no such a thing as evidence for ex nihilo creation

And I showed you that this also mean that ex nihilo creation did not happen.

The problem is that you respond to this with nothing but handwaving.

 

[Chalnoth]

You're right --- I'm not out to prove my premise at all --- that's your job.

It's your premise. The onus is on you to show its validity.

That's because I've been taught that carbon and radiometric dating methods are unreliable when it comes to dating things beyond a certain point; and rather than have to argue the point with people on here who are much more knowledgeable than I, who would bury me in technospeak, I just dismiss it outright.

Then you are doing yourself a great disservice. Radiometric dating methods are quite reliable indeed. The way you check this is trivial: you simply compare completely different dating methods that make completely different assumptions. That way, if any of your assumptions are wrong, then the different dating methods will provide different dates, and you'll be able to go back and reexamine the evidence to get a more correct result.

When I was growing up, people were carbon-dating skeletons of "hominids" as hundreds of millions of years old, until it was "discovered" that Carbon dating is ineffectual beyond 5730 years.

Carbon dating can be performed out to about 50,000 years, and this limitation is going to be blatantly obvious to anybody that understands radiometric dating at all. The half-life of Carbon 14 is 5730 years, which means that half of the original amount will remain after 5730 years. After 50,000 years, roughly 1/500th of the C14 remains, and you start running into limits imposed by contamination and measurement of the C14.

Same with radioactive elements. If you said this element has been here 10,000 years because its half-life is 20,000 years, then I would tell you that when God created it, it was currently at 16,000 years of half-life. (If I'm saying this right.)

I really do not understand this insistence on your god being a deceiver. After all, radiometric dating methods are calibrated against other, completely independent dating methods. Radiocarbon dating, for instance, can be calibrated against tree rings and a number of other dating methods. Tree rings alone go out to about 11,000 years (and how, do you think, does that mesh with a global flood?).

I simply want to show that there is no such a thing as evidence for ex nihilo creation.

This is absolutely true. So why believe it at all?

 

[RealityCheck]

AV1611 -

Carbon 14 dating is only one method of figuring out the age of something. And Chalnoth has covered that quite adequately.

But your post simply says the same thing I did. That is, if physical evidence shows something contrary to what you believe is true, then you reject the evidence, insist your belief is true, and re-interpret the evidence to fit that belief. But as others have already pointed out to you, that says a lot about your version of God.

You would claim that if we find a rock with a radioactive element in it, and dating methods indicate the rock to be 1 billion years old, then in reality the rock is 6000 years old but was created with an age of 999,993,000 years at creation, so as to appear 1 billion years old now.

Why would God do this? Why would God create so many things to appear older than they really are?

 

[rmwilliamsll]

AV1611 -

snip

But your post simply says the same thing I did. That is, if physical evidence shows something contrary to what you believe is true, then you reject the evidence, insist your belief is true, and re-interpret the evidence to fit that belief. But as others have already pointed out to you, that says a lot about your version of God.

snip

it is actually much stronger than mere conflict with existing belief.

That's because I've been taught that carbon and radiometric dating methods are unreliable when it comes to dating things beyond a certain point; and rather than have to argue the point with people on here who are much more knowledgeable than I, who would bury me in technospeak, I just dismiss it outright.

he acknowledges that it is taught to him.
But rather than learn from anyone else who would explain it at a technical level and thus exceed his information input levels, he chooses to dismiss it.

i call this willful ignorance that is content with being such.

i understand my ignorance.
i understand being aware of my ignorance.
i do not understand being unwilling to deal with it and learn.

i simply see no way that a Christian who claims that God is Creation, Sustainer and Judge of the universe can be content with willful ignorance. It's God's world and it displays some of His attributes, why would you not want to listen to Him speaking?

 

[Loudmouth]

As others have said, if an ex nihilo creation is consistent with any and all evidence, known and unknown, then why believe it to begin with? What this says is that the acceptance of ex nihilo creation was never accepted on evidence at the start. Due to the unfalsifiable nature of such a claim, you certainly can not rule out the possibility that the universe was created last thursday, complete with a false history and false memories. The impossiblity of falsification puts the Genesis account in just as much doubt as it was in before. For the Genesis account to be verified it has to be make predictions, which would make it falsifiable. For instance, if the universe were created 6,000 years ago then there should be evidence that is consistent with this date. An ex nihilo creation event with no plausible evidence is just an exersize in solipsism, a meaningless and failed paradigm.