Cur Ex Nihilo, Nihil Fit

• Nothingness is the state of total absence of being.

• Only things which in some sense have being can be ascribed a nature, potentiality, and actuality. (Things like humans have being in a "real" sense while things like unicorns may be said to have being in a "virtual" sense.)

• So nothingness does not have a nature, potentiality, or actuality.

• But to posit something coming from nothing is to ascribe a nature and potentiality to nothingness.

• So something cannot come from nothing.

A Meditation on Dread

Human beings are naturally predisposed toward feeling the sensation of fear in certain circumstances. When someone points a gun at me and demands my wallet, my body releases adrenaline, my skin flushes, my hands start to tremble, and so on. Acute stress responses needn't happen only when one is faced with a real and/or physical threat either. People often feel fear, panic, and dread at things which aren't (or at least are not immediate) threats at all, such as heights, spiders, or the ocean. They also might feel fear or dread over more "existential" worries, such as social pressure, despair over the future, regret, or other such things. There are also fears of a more psychological nature, such as cognitive dissonance, and the fear of being wrong.

Here I want to discuss specifically these latter types of dread as they apply to the Christian. I believe that the Christian is in somewhat of a unique position when it comes to fear and dread and that God has provided specific consolations in the Scriptures that speak directly to this matter.

A Reassessment of the Cogito

• Thinking is occurring. 

• Such thinking must have a subject.

• That subject is what can be called "me."

• Therefore I think.

• Therefore I am.

A Refutation of Gordon Clark on the Cosmological Argument

Gordon H. Clark has criticized the broadly Aristotelian cosmological argument set forth by Aquinas in the Summa Theologica. He displays serious misunderstandings of its basic premises, which I assume he allows because of his theological resistance to the idea that God's existence can be demonstrated apart from revelation. His position with regard to the argument in question is demonstrably false, and I shall refute him here.

A Brief Proof of the Causal Principle

• If a thing begins to exist (that is, its essence becomes imparted with existence), then the potential that it has for existence is actualized.

• Nothing can actualize its own potential for existence, because things which do not (yet) exist are purely potential, and that which is purely potential cannot actualize anything. 

• So if a thing begins to exist, its potential for existence must be actualized by something apart from itself.

• So if something begins to exist, it must have an external cause of its existence.