Can something come from nothing

[Silver]

despite there being no logical reason to hold that belief anymore.

I especially love that part. There really is no reason for anyone to have religious faith.

Faith is simply a clutch for one who cannot properly deal with reality, much in the same way that drugs or alcohol are the clutch for others.

[robvalue]

Cheers

[ignoramus]

He he ...So Rob, basically, the apologists have invented the words "immaterial", spiritual, etc, as an extension of their favourite fallacy, the god of the gaps fallacy. Outside of space and time? wtf!

[robvalue]

Yeah. It may as well be called, "You can't take my toys away!"

Keep them, seriously. I don't care. Just name one direct practical, demonstrable result that has ever come out of the "Study of immaterial things that exist". Or theology, for that matter. You can't, because there isn't any. It's a waste of time. You've defined them so as they are impossible to demonstrate.

I'm not saying there is nothing there. I'm saying you don't know anything about it, if there is anything there.

It's a conflation of literal existence and abstract concepts or metaphors. Sure, concepts can be said to "exist". God exists as a concept. You'll get no arguments from me there.

Lol, "The study of things you can't prove aren't there".

[surreptitious57]

The outside of space and time meme is one that I am personally familiar with because I used it myself when I were a Christian. But from a purely linguistic [ non ontological ] perspective
it makes zero sense. Because space and time are features of the universe. And the definition of universe is all that there is. Ergo there can be nothing outside of it since how can there be
something outside of all that there is? So if the entity known as God does actually exist he has to do so within the universe not without it. When I am talking about the universe here I do
not mean merely the local expansion of the observable cosmos. But everything else too. Therefore before the Big Bang [ if there was a before ] Beyond this universe in to other universes
[ if they exist ] Everything that has ever existed and will ever exist. And so if the entity known as God is not anywhere there [ even if he cannot be detected ] then he does not exist at all

[Neo-Scholastic]

The outside of space and time meme is one that I am personally familiar with because I used it myself when I were a Christian. But from a purely linguistic [ non ontological ] perspective it makes zero sense. Because space and time are features of the universe. And the definition of universe is all that there is. Ergo there can be nothing outside of it since how can there be
something outside of all that there is? So if the entity known as God does actually exist he has to do so within the universe not without it.

You are correct to say that technically of the word 'universe' is 'all that is, was or ever will be", but we've kind of moved away from that definition, That definition is not how people use it today. Now it means a self-contained and self-sustaining physical entity that could be part of a larger totality, e.g. a multiverse. If some version of multiverse theory is correct, then each local universe exists outside the time and space of all the others. Nevertheless, that's not how I think about God, as some entity standing apart our world. I tend toward Panentheism.

[Edwardo Piet]

The fact is that some ontological positions are logically incoherent, like materialism, and others are not.

In what way is materialism incoherent, ontologically?

Protip: It isn't.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The fact is that some ontological positions are logically incoherent, like materialism, and others are not.

In what way is materialism incoherent, ontologically?

My comment was more of a throw away line leading to a larger point about Robvalue's tacit ontology. Your question is simple. But since materialism is a term of art, I would place myself in peril of creating a host of straw men if I failed to make all manner of qualifications and distinctions between physical reduction, naturalism, mechanism, etc. I am sure you already have some notions of my general objections to materialistic theories. You and I have discussed it many times.

By the way, I'm a mathematician...

...who apparently believes that the sum of a string of zeros is greater than zero.

[Mister Agenda]

And the definition of universe is all that there is. Ergo there can be nothing outside of it since how can there be something outside of all that there is? So if the entity known as God does actually exist he has to do so within the universe not without it.

As soon as anything exists, you have a universe. If God is real, and at one point nothing else but God existed, then God was the entirety of the universe then. Or quantum foam. Or branes. Or whatever turns out to be the actual case, if we're ever able to find out with some degree of certainty beyond 'the math works and it doesn't violate any evidence or laws of physics that we know of'.

[surreptitious57]

Assuming for the sake of argument that other universes exist then collectively they would be the universe or the Universe. The reason why the word
multiverse is used instead is to avoid obvious confusion. However multiverse is just another word for the universe. Another word for all that there is