Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic

[Angrboda]

No, that's not actually true.  In addition, there are multiple PSRs depending upon specifically what one does or does not want to exempt from the rule.  But I'm used to your penchant for exaggeration by now, so I'll just let that slide.

What I do find troubling is that you are justifying "being comes only from being" via ex nihilo nihil fit, as that seems to be an axiom rather than a justified truth, so asserting its complement ("being only comes from being") appears to be nothing more than begging the question.  I'd like to see the statement justified, not simply assumed.  You implied that you could provide examples from "reality."  That at least would provide you with the basis of an inductive argument, but given your last reply, it doesn't seem that you are able to do that.  Is ex nihilo nihil fit an a priori truth?  I don't think it is.  Therefore I'd appeal to Hitchens' razor, that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Well, Spinoza thought it was an axiom (Axiom 7). In fact, I read in some places he says it is a necessary truth. 

In a brief explanatory note to this axiom, Spinoza adds:

Since existing is something positive, we cannot say that it has nothing as its cause (by Axiom 7). Therefore, we must assign some positive cause, or reason, why [a thing] exists—either an external one, i.e., one outside the thing itself, or an internal one, one comprehended in the nature and definition of the existing thing itself. (Geb. I/158/4–9)[3]

Axiom 7, to which Spinoza appeals in the explanation, is a variant of the “ex nihilo, nihil fit” (“from nothing, nothing comes”) principle, and stipulates that an existing thing and its perfections (or qualities) cannot have nothing or a non-existing thing as their cause. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/

In all of our observations, something has never come from nothing. Everything as always come from something. Is that enough evidence for the principle: being comes from being?

As far as a priori, perhaps. Robert Koons came up with something like this: 

Start with the observation that once we admit that some contingent states of affairs have no explanations, a completely new sceptical scenario becomes possible: No demon is deceiving you, but your perceptual states are occurring for no reason at all, with no prior causes.

Moreover,objective probabilities are tied to laws of nature or objective tendencies, and so if an objective probability attaches to some contingent fact, then that situation can be given an explanation in terms of laws of nature or objective tendencies.  Hence, if the PSR is false of some contingent fact, no objective probability attaches to the fact. 

Thus we cannot even say that violations of the PSR are improbable if the PSR is false. Consequently, someone who does not affirm the PSR cannot say that the sceptical scenario is objectively improbable.  It may be taken to follow from this that if the PSR were false or maybe even not known a priori, we wouldn’t know any empirical truths.  But we do know empirical truths.  Hence,the PSR is true, and maybe even known a priori.

from Blackwells Companion to Natural Theology. I don't have the exact reference since I had this chapter in Evernote. I can get it upon request.

I'm going to be curt because I'm not feeling well, but you keep circling back to ex nihilo nihil fit, a principle that you cannot actually demonstrate. Regardless, quoting Spinoza doesn't actually answer my objection, nor does your inductive argument go far. If the universe came from nothing then every thing we observe came from nothing. You seem to be simply begging the question rather than actually justifying the principle. As regards Koons, if we are in fact brains in vats, and all our perceptions are fictions unrelated to what is in fact the case, then all his arguments follow in the same manner. In such a situation, it is impossible to know empirical truths. Since we would not know that we are brains in vats, our belief that we know empirical truths would in fact be false. I'm not overly impressed by the argument given that his conclusion follows from our knowing something which may in principle be unknowable.