"I'm saying that when broken down and considered carefully, creation ex nihilo is a creation from something after all, be it creation from God or whatever."

You are entitled to say whatever you want, Tat, but in this case, you are simply wrong. The whole point of belief in creation ex nihilo is that it is from nothing. If it were from something, it wouldn't be a miracle. Let me be clear here: I, like you, have a problem with the whole concept of something from nothing. But that does not mean that I can change the fundamental belief of western monotheistic religions. Whether you agree with it or not, that is their belief.

You seem to be talking about "existence" in a general, bird's eye view. No, you did not exist before you were born, and neither will you exist after you are dead. Talking about elements continuing after your death is not consciousness, i.e. it is not "I" existing. The "I" that you are now will not be in existence. The fact that elements of you will be rejoined with nature is not "existence" in a way that you will know about.

So there may always be "something" for whoever is alive; for someone who is dead there isn't "something". There isn't even Nothing, since that is the absence of everything, and that is not experienced by the dead.

So I repeat what I stated, this time emphasising the cardinal words: "And, no, something is not in existence *for us* when we are dead.

As to why I think "nothing" matters after I spent 5 years researching it, culminating in a book... well, looking at how much "nothing" has been worried about throughout history, how western civilization was held back by some 600 years in the Middle Ages because of the Church's erroneous belief that zero was "nothing, how important "nothing" is in the arts, in science, in religion and in how worrying about "nothing" has a direct link to our own existence, I suppose that would be enough to get on with. And as we can see from the discussions we are having, "nothing" certainly seems to matter not only me.

www.nothing-matters.org

You seem to be talking about "existence" in a general, bird's eye view. No, you did not exist before you were born, and neither will you exist after you are dead. Talking about elements continuing after your death is not consciousness, i.e. it is not "I" existing. The "I" that you are now will not be in existence. The fact that elements of you will be rejoined with nature is not "existence" in a way that you will know about.

It depends on what exactly is saying "I". You are on about consciousness only, not the full scope of exactly who and what we all really are. We're much more than just that. What we are, basically, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. The consciousness of the fabric, I assume, rises and falls but the fabric and structure of existence is eternal.

You are correct that we can't experience, consciously experience "nothing." It's beyond experience as it were. You can experience the mystery of trying to contemplate it but that's about it. And if the easterner's are correct and the whole universe is a type consciousness after all, then that makes nonsense out of everything we're speculating about death and pre-birth. In that case there is always and forever consciousness on varying levels. And if they're correct about the scope of consciousness then I suppose no one will be experiencing "nothing" after death, but rather some type of rejoining universal consciousness or something along those lines. So it looks like all in all there's no experience of true "nothing" in the equation either way we approach it - consciousness rising and falling or steady consciousness.

As to why I think "nothing" matters after I spent 5 years researching it, culminating in a book... well, looking at how much "nothing" has been worried about throughout history, how western civilization was held back by some 600 years in the Middle Ages because of the Church's erroneous belief that zero was "nothing, how important "nothing" is in the arts, in science, in religion and in how worrying about "nothing" has a direct link to our own existence, I suppose that would be enough to get on with. And as we can see from the discussions we are having, "nothing" certainly seems to matter not only me.

Stop there. Why do you suppose the church was upset about zero being "nothing?"

I don't "suppose" it. It's what I discovered after quite a bit of research on the subject. The facts and evidence are set out in the first chapter of my book.

www.nothing-matters.org

I'm sure they did have a problem with zero, what I was asking you is why did they have a problem with the number 0? Just a summary would be fine.

Because they erroneously associated zero with "nothing", which was a theological no-no. They should have known better, since mathematicians of the day made it clear that zero was not "nothing". The problem was faulty translation from Arabic to Latin.

There is no year zero either (except for Pol Pot). I discovered the problem with this when I used astronomical records of the position of the sun over the last 6000 years and found that a pattern with period 179 years mysteriously jumps to 180 years at the BC/AD turn of the calendar, where the dates go straight from 1BC to 1AD. Nothing is a frightening abyss. Faith insists God is something, not nothing. This insistence is at the ontological ground of supernatural fantasy, which is preferred by the religious over the logical argument that apart from reality there is nothing.

Yes, I agree.

rongreen5 wrote:Because they erroneously associated zero with "nothing", which was a theological no-no. They should have known better, since mathematicians of the day made it clear that zero was not "nothing". The problem was faulty translation from Arabic to Latin.

Yes, this is what I'm trying to zero in on. Take Roberts post above too. The religious believe that God is something. In otherwords something produced everything as opposed to nothing produced everything. They had a problem with zero because they didn't want to acknowledge "nothing." They like to accuse atheists of believing that everything spontaneously emerged from "nothing", and then the atheists shoot back that no, that's really true, the BB isn't really a theory of "nothing" producing everything.

My point is that the whole creation ex nihilo is merely an assertion that doesn't work out. Not even for the religious. They don't really believe that God created the world from "nothing." Thats just a figure of speech. The miracle has more to do with the spoken word creation, which, doesn't really hinge around true nothing or nothingness. If God was always in existence, then something was always in existence in this scenario. Where does God dwell in the myth? Heaven is the abode of God. So both God and his dwelling are necessarily in existence before the creation of this world. There is a realm of existence before the creation account in Genesis gets going. A realm of existence with no beginning or end.

When or where is this pre-creation "nothing" to be found? You can't find it, not in the context of the Judeo-Christian mythology. And that's why zero was such a "no, no" for the pious. Genesis does not say 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth from absolutely nothing.' In the beginning of what? Obviously not the beginning of God or God's layer of the heavens because there is no beginning for that. Those already exist and then the earth is made. It's void and without form. But there are waters of some type. The creation myth concerns the local near eastern cosmology of a multi-level universe. The whole thing hinges on something, coming from something else. Zero, is basically out. And there's a certain contradiction between people promoting the translation of a creation ex nihilo and how the actual mythology is written.

Believe it or not, but I agree with you, Tat.

www.nothing-matters.org

BTW, I personally don't believe the Judeo-Christian mythology (or any other) to be factually or historically true. I'm just trying to reason through the myth as it's written.