Creationist Equivocation

[Objectivist]

OK, maybe package dealing is a better description, which I think is also a fallacy. Packing two different and contradictory meanings into a concept is certainly a breach of logic and completely destroys the purpose of concepts in the first place, isolating all concretes of a certain type from others and uniting them as one as means of cognition.

I think you’re unnecessarily hung up on the word ‘create’ (or at least on the creationists’ use of it). There is nothing about the word that requires that creation must occur using pre-existing materials. Create simply means ‘to bring something into existence’.

The chief trouble with creationists isn’t that they’re misusing a word, but that they wish to account for existence in a manner that is wholly unsupported by evidence or valid reasoning.

Boru

I don't think I am.  Concepts are how our minds work so it's important to understand how they are formed, how they are validated, and especially how they are defined.  It's a lack of understanding of concepts, and the relationship between consciousness and reality, that leads to notions such as creation ex nihilo in the first place.  It's no different than notions of dragons, witches riding broomsticks, and Casper the friendly ghost. These notions could not have been formed objectively since we don't have a single example of any of them to perceive.  The only way to come up with them is to imagine them.  Since we have all perceived something being created, it's easy to imagine something being created out of nothing, by conjuring it up but to accept such a notion as legitimate would be to obliterate the line between the imaginary and the real.  That's what creationism does and piggybacks on a legitimate concept to leach meaning.  It's a lack of understanding of concepts that allows people to do this.  It's also a lack of understanding of the relationship between consciousness and its objects that leads to this.