Creatio Ex Nihilo - Forming Something out of Nothing?

[Mudhammam]

As for the scholar question... this is the sort of thing that frustrates me (hopefully by telling you you will understand me a bit more). You made a sweeping claim about the conclusions of all biblical scholars. I asked you to support that claim. Is this your response? It is fine if you don't want to answer, but don't disguise that by demanding that I produce a source in order to prove the negative. What sort of discussion would that be?

I'm sure you're familiar with the quote, "the amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." Well, I would no time left in the day if every argument I made was required to be accompanied by five references, and I don't have enough interest in anyone here to invest that amount of time when the internet is accessible to everyone else I am engaging with online. Now, it's perfectly fine for you to ask for me to provide citation when I claim that "every scholar... anything," and admittedly I was using a bit of hyperbole, but I figured that since what I was saying is so basic to anyone who reads other ancient mythology and can see that much of the Bible reads exactly the same way, and there is no clear distinction between its history and its myth---the two often intertwined to at best offer us pseudo-history when it is recounting historical events---then what I was saying didn't need any further confirmation than a look at the texts themselves.

As for claim #1, it is different than what you originally said. Originally, you said that "the biblical authors were myth-makers". Now, you have restated it to say "1) the Jews wrote myths, even borrowing from other cultures." Every scholar will admit that. No serious scholar, however, will claim that "the biblical authors were myth-makers". Any rational person can see that some biblical texts do not contain mythical language at all. Your restatement indicates that you recognize the difference between the two formulations as well as the scholarly inadequacy of the first formulation. Thank you for that recognition. Would you at least admit that no biblical scholar would ever suggest that "the biblical authors were myth-makers" in such an unqualified way as that? At least give me that much.

Many texts of the bible contain mythical aspects, many of which were borrowed by neighboring cultures. Simplistically and unequivocally stating that all of the biblical authors were myth-makers is just not supported by the data.

I kind of think you're splitting hairs here. In the early days theologians and myth-makers were the same creatures, and since the entire Bible is a book concerned with theology, it utilizes mythical narratives to establish its theological claims. Even in a book that is concerned with the history of the Jewish kings, for example, the author uses myth as a device to recount the event, thus saying something like "Yahweh instructed us to do such and such....and the city was spared." So, though I will give you that not all of the writers of the Bible thought they were conveying myth, even in their retelling of past historical events, the two are almost always mixed together, and that's why I think---rightly---to call them myth-makers or to say they wrote myths, pretty much amounts to the same thing, and is a correct, though shallow, assessment. They weren't unique in this regards either, as ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite, etc. accounts read just the same.

Finally, so what? The fact is that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all make the claim that their god revealed himself as an eternal thing. Do you dispute that people actually claim that as a teaching of their religion?

Arguments from contingency (which employs the idea "out of nothing, nothing comes") and their successive arguments claim that some thing(s) have always existed. Do you dispute the fact that these arguments think they prove that?

The idea that some thing(s) have always existed is similar if not identical to the idea of eternity. Do you dispute that relation of terms?

The eternity claimed by the philosophical arguments is the same idea as the eternity claimed by the religious teaching. Do you dispute that?

I'm not aware of any ancient theogonies that begin with nothing and then---poof---a being is born. They all start with chaos or necessity or some eternal principle or being to get everything else started. So, I don't dispute that Christians, Jews, or Muslims couldn't conceive of what nobody else meaningfully can, namely, eternal nothingness.

I don't dispute any of these other things either but I also don't see any significance in them. You do realize that every apologist for every theistic religion uses the argument that, "something is eternal, just like my religion claims my God is, and coupled with other arguments we have a strong inductive case for God's existence." So, when you pretty much said just that, and made it sound as if there is some legitimacy to the idea of revelation, I took objection. It proves nothing other than that our conception of reality and time does not allow us to imagine complete and total non-being. That's not a start for anything having to do with any religious tradition, but it is an indication about our mind's limitation in simply using metaphysical concepts to grasp the essence or nature of the cosmos.