From: mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: St. Thomas and The Contingency Argument
Date: 23 Jul 92 18:58:03 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

In article <g+S-1BB@engin.umich.edu> paulk@engin.umich.edu (Paul J. Kominsky) writes:
>} If 'nothing' is to unstructured, then we cannot know
>} anything definite about it, including that nothing can
>} come from it.
>
>Well, I'm not sure what "structured" is supposed to mean,
>but it isn't at all clear to me that we cannot have negative
>knowledge about something that is supposedly "unstructured."

How do we know what 'nothing' describes? If it refers to the
absence of everything, then it must refer to the absence
of anything. In particular, there must be an absence
of reasons why things cannot come into existence. (There
must also be an absence of reason why they can come into
existence). 'Nothing' must be indescribably and unpredictable,
i.e. no coherent description can be formulated of it, nor
can any principles be derived from knowledge of it, nor
can any predictions be made about it (including that it
will give rise to nothing).

>With a true "nothing" there is no possible process to get 
>"something."  It's a bit odd to call the *lack* of such a 
>process "something."  Nothing is the absence of "something,"
>and we work from that understanding.

A prohibition against the production of "something" is
itself "something". You are therefore not talking about
a 'true "nothing"'. You objected once before that 
formulations of this kind are 'playing with words,'
but I don't see that the objection carries any force.
Any coherent description or logical consequence of
one is as much "something" as any other referent
of a description. The only coherent objection I can see to
this formulation is that the prohibition against
"nothing" producing "something" isn't the referent of
a coherent description, i.e. it doesn't exist, which
leads to the same conclusion.

>} We can argue that, given infinite
>} time, if all things have this 'tendency not to exist' then
>} all must have changed, but it is not clear that all must
>} have changed into 'nothing' any more than all must
>} have changed into cheese. 
>
>Hmmm, I think this is a useful analogy.  Thanks.
>
>Either everything changes into "cheese" or it doesn't.
>If there is a (true, real) process by which everything 
>is changing into cheese, then in infinite time it would
>have, and everything would be cheese now.  But that is
>not the case.
>
>There are therefore three cases:
>1) a process of changing into cheese exists in all things.
>If so, we must posit something creating "non-cheese" stuff.

Yes, but this something can be a process of changing
things into non-cheese things, which would be no more
interesting than the process of changing them into
cheese. There might be an indefinite number of such
processes or tendencies.

>The possibility of "non-cheese" stuff popping into existence
>without a reason is excluded.

Why is that?

>2) a process of changing into cheese does not exist
>universally.  If so, then we must posit some "non-cheese"
>stuff that doesn't have a process of becoming "cheese."
>This is where the second part of the contingency argument
>takes over.
>-or-
>3) there is not infinite time.  If so, then we must posit
>something creating the "non-cheese" stuff to begin with.
>and the second part of the argument takes over.

Not necessarily. Time could be finite but unbounded.
There may be no beginning, but this does not necessarily
imply that there is infinite time.

>The set of "somethings" which never become "nothing" is either
>empty or it isn't.  The contingency argument considers both
>possibilities.  The first is ruled out in the first part of the
>argument (because of infinite time), and the second is handled by
>the second part of the argument.  It's not a problem if you think
>the set contains "everything."

I have no argument with you here.