Creationist Equivocation

[Objectivist]

 two different meanings into the concept of 'creation'

Basically the issue comes down to whether you think the universe has always existed, or whether it came into being at some point. 

If it has always existed, then everything that's made is made of pre-existing materials. If it came into being at some point, then all the stuff in the universe appeared ex nihilo. Naturally people who believe in God will say "created" ex nihilo, while others will prefer a different verb. "Started" maybe. Or whatever word you use for the Big Bang. 

As far as I recall, Greek philosophers reasoned that the universe had no starting point. They talk about "creation," but this always means the imposition of order on preexisting stuff. So for example Hesiod says that in the beginning was chaos -- but chaos is something. Over time the chaotic stuff that was floating around started to form shapes, thanks to Eros, the attractive force. Eventually you got the world as we know it. Plato's creation myth is sort of similar. There are atoms pre-existing (he doesn't call them atoms, but they are tiny particles that come in a variety of shapes) and the atoms get organized into recognizable objects, due to the Forms, through the agency of the Demiurge. 

The Jews seem to have debated whether creation was ex nihilo or not. The first chapter of Genesis seems to suggest that "the face of the waters" was there before God made the other stuff, but this was not enough to cause the author of Maccabees and Philo of Alexandria to believe in a universe with no beginning. They argued for creatio ex nihilo. (Another case where a sentence in Genesis was read metaphorically very early on.)

Later theologians have been very careful to differentiate creation from existing material from creation from nothing. One particular heated debate took place around the iconoclasm controversy in Byzantium. These issues prompted careful thinking about what it means for one thing to be an image of another, and what degree of creativity human beings might have. While they said that human creativity is a part of what it means for us to be made in the image of God, they were careful to specify that an image is not the complete reproduction of the original, which means that human creativity must always employ preexisting materials, while God's creation did not. 

This particular discussion was renewed when the Romantic poets began to make creativity the most important virtue of the arts. Before this, skillful mimesis was generally thought to be most important, but the Romantics emphasized originality. Coleridge in particular wrote carefully about different levels of the imagination, and to what extent it could be creative. He also concludes that the human imagination can only recombine preexisting elements, and that God alone works ex nihilo.

So I certainly understand that if you're not a Christian or a Jew you wouldn't accept the idea of God creating everything from nothing. But I don't think it's fair to say that Christianity in general equivocates or uses the terms carelessly.

If existence is primary, then it is eternal.  Existence is primary.  The question "where did it all come from" is a nonsensical question that trades in stolen concepts.  The universe is existence seen as a whole and represents all beings, their attributes, their actions, their relationships, etc., so saying that the universe came into being is like saying the universe came into itself.

No one should accept the idea that a god created anything from nothing because not only do we not need an explanation for the fact that existence exists, but as I've pointed out there is no evidence of anything, ever, being created out of nothing by conscious will alone. Can you provide any?