[MD] Chance

[Ham Priday]

Craig  --:


> You should be disappointed only if you DID FIND the 'ex nihilo'
> principle ("Nothing comes from nothing") in a logic book.  That's not
> the kind of thing logic books are informative about.  Even a science
> book won't help you.

I'm not looking for information, Craig.  I'm looking for logical validation 
of a
principle that is just as true to the empiricist as it is to the 
philosopher.  One would expect to find the "empty set" of mathematics 
treated in a text of syllogistic premises.  My disappointment concerns its 
absence in a logical treatise.  (I do expect to find it, however, perhaps 
under a different category of logical principles.)

> A science book can sometimes tell you that X came from Y
> (e.g., Saturn's rings came from cosmic dust), but if science doesn't
> know where X came from, then it doesn't always know whether
> it came from something rather than nothing.

Insufficient knowledge about a phenomenon may lead investigators to 
theorize about its origin, but until such a theory is validated by empirical 
evidence, it cannot become a scientific principle.  As David Darling said, 
the cosmologists "have not got a clue" as to the source of the Big Bang, and 
their theories are based on speculation which does not pass muster as 
scientific fact.

> "Nothing comes from nothing" is a METAPHYSICAL rule that
> says "Keep looking", but it can't guarantee there's anything to find.

Wherever did you get the idea that a metaphysical principle says "keep 
looking"?  Does the equation 2 + 2 = 4 invite us to look for exceptions? 
The law of conservation of energy states that energy may neither be created 
nor destroyed; therefore the sum of all the energies in a system is a 
constant. Does this mean that if we look long enough, we'll find a system 
that violates this law?  If the principles of logic and nature were that 
vulnerable, scientific methodology would have been abandoned long ago.

While I accept the caveat that absolute truth is inaccessible to man, I 
shall continue to regard the 'ex nihilo' principle as fundamental to all 
theoretical premises.  And I would hope that it would not be viewed as a 
disputed issue.

Regards,
Ham