From: Ellen K. 

The author of the below  is a professor of anatomy and cell biology at
McGill University who also writes on Chassidic thought.  The article is
kind of long, but explains very well a number of issues which have been
raised in this thread.  There are a couple of points which I personally
would perhaps have expressed differently, but I certainly agree with the
main thrust.

Something from Nothing
By Yaakov Brawer

Ever since our father Abraham first recognized the Creator and established
a personal relationship with Him, his descendants have been in conflict
with the rest of the world. This discord has assumed a wide variety of
formats throughout history. The Jews have been in conflict with idol
worshippers, Hellenists, Christians, Moslems, communists, secularists, and
so on. Indeed, it would appear that the only limit to the number of clashes
is the number of identifiable non-Jewish, or more accurately, non-Torah
world views.

Given the numerous and varied expressions of contention between the Torah
perspective and other views of reality, it might be assumed that there are
many grounds for controversy and that the nature of each dispute is
determined by a unique set of conflicting suppositions. For example, one
might assume that the roots of the conflict between the Torah and
Christianity are fundamentally different from those underlying the
incompatibility between Torah and the concept of biological evolution.

If such were indeed the case, it would seem to indicate that the Torah Jew
is in an intellectually untenable position and that it is only
stubbornness, perversity, and a debilitating isolationism that spur him on
in his endless war on multiple fronts. How is it possible for the Torah Jew
to maintain an immutable, unique view that is in conflict with so many
systems of thought, produced by so many great minds throughout history?

The answer is that the situation is far more simple than it appears at
first glance. There is really only one bone of contention and there are
really only two conflicting viewpoints: Torah Judaism and everything else.
The bone of contention is the principle of something from something. which
is the unifying, fundamental premise on which each of the many components
of the "everything else" category is based. The antithesis of
something from something is the principle of something from nothing, which
is the foundation of the Torah view of existence.

What does this really mean? Does a single, simple generalization accurately
describe the essence of Jewish, as opposed to non-Jewish, thought; and does
it really explain everything?

To begin with, something from something is indeed an all-encompassing
presupposition that ultimately explains everything that goes on in the
world. Simply stated, it is the assumption of cause and effect. Everything
has an antecedent cause to which it can be directly related. The antecedent
to a chicken is an egg. The antecedent to a house is lumber. The antecedent
to the lumber is a forest, and so on. Everything and every event is the
product of a progressive developmental sequence of causes. Everything comes
from an identifiable something; hence the process of something from
something. The chain of somethings may be very long and the last link may
look very different from the first. There is, for example, no obvious
similarity between an apple seed and an apple tree. Nevertheless, the tree
is a distant link in a long chain of cause and effect from the seed.
Moreover, it is the inevitable and predictable outcome. The apple seed
cannot, for example, produce a goldfish, nor, for that matter, a peach
tree. The features expressed by a distant something in the chain (a tree)
are limited by the features that define an earlier something (the seed).

The concept that everything comes from something seems obvious, logical,
and pragmatic. It provides a continuity in time and space without which we
could not relate to our natural circumstances. Since everything is a
consequence of an evolutionary continuum of related events, everything has
a history of which it is the product. On this basis, one can interpret the
past and predict, and hence respond to, events in the future. Thus, the
process of something from something serves as the rationale for diagnosing
and treating disease, playing the stock market, or negotiating a treaty
with a foreign government.

If this description of the principle of something from something is
accurate, it is hard to see much wrong with it. There seems little here for
Torah Jews to get riled up over. On the contrary, when it comes to daily
life, or professional activities, Torah Jews operate on the assumption of
something from something just like everyone else. Moreover, both the
theoretical and the applied aspects of Torah law are replete with examples
of deductive and inductive reasoning, characteristic of the something from
something mode of thinking. Torah law, in most cases, deals with natural
circumstances and assumes a natural, interpretable order of events. It
presumes nature to be real and to behave in a predictable, continuous way.

Thus far, there is no argument. The source of the trouble is at a far more
fundamental level. It involves those events or beings for which, according
to Torah, there are no precedents, such as Creation and the Creator. To put
it another way, the controversy is not over nature, but rather over the
nature of nature.

Even those who are able to ignore the Creator by claiming that He does not
exist are stuck with the problem of how and why the universe (including
themselves) carne to be. Although there are many approaches to the subject,
they all share the common underlying assumption of something from
something. So, since the universe currently consists of a vast number of
entities with measurable physical properties organized in a unique way, its
ultimate source must likewise, in some way, be bound by physical
characteristics and dimensions. The current appearance of any particular
aspect of Creation is the product of a history, or of an evolutionary chain
of events that progressively molded a previous something into a
contemporary something. For example, animals, including humans, are made
out of chemicals. It follows, then, by something from something, that the
origin(s) of all animal species must be simpler, less processed collections
of chemicals, which in the course of time, and in response to natural
events, developed in a stepwise, sequential fashion into what they are at
the moment. It matters not at all whether the changes constituting the
steps in the chain occurred individually or in clusters. The governing
principle of something from something is the same. Indeed, there are as
many variations of the something from something theme as there are
scientific and philosophic disciplines.

The same fundamental principle is invoked to explain why the continents
look the way they do, why there is a universal background of microwave
radiation, why mitochondria contain DNA, and so forth. In short, as stated
previously, something from something is used to explain everything. This
does not imply that every explanation is simple or that here is necessarily
a linear relationship between any set of causes and their effects. On the
contrary, the relationship may be so complex as to defy elucidation.
Turbulence or chaotic behavior, for example, is unpredictable due to the
complexity of elements that feed into the system under observation.
Moreover, as propounded in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it may be
impossible to simultaneously determine all the physical properties that
define a system. This does not weaken the something from something law; it
simply indicates that we can't know all the somethings.

It is not easy to understand how a world view that leads nowhere and
ultimately explains nothing became so rooted in the human psyche. The
principle of something from something is, after all, the downward spiral
path of infinite regress. No matter how far you extrapolate back on the
chain of cause and effect, there is yet a prior cause which shares the same
fundamental limitations as its progeny (i.e., it is defined by physical
properties).

An objection could be raised. It could be argued that the principal of
something from something is by no means a globally accepted axiom. On the
contrary, it is rejected by many if not most people, whose concept of
reality necessitates the existence of G-d. Many people see an expression of
intelligence and purpose in nature. This in itself is as logically valid as
the perspective of the scientific secularist who sees no purpose in the
chain of cause and effect from which the universe presumably evolved.
Actually, considering the stunning discoveries of the past decade in
physics and cosmology, one could easily argue that the assumption of
intelligence and purpose in Creation is the intuitively stronger view.

The problem is that despite the many diverse conceptualizations of G-d,
underneath it all, He looks disconcertingly familiar. In fact, He looks,
more or less, like us. It seems that although the recognition of purpose
and intelligence in Creation supports the concept of a purposeful and
intelligent Creator, this recognition alone is not enough to overcome the
seemingly inescapable gravitational attraction of something from something.

Our grasp of creative intelligence and our sense of purpose is derived from
observations of ourselves, since we are the only entities in Creation (to
which we have access) who possess these qualities. Our notions of
"creating" are likewise acquired by seeing how we do it. There
is, after all, no other model to learn from. So, assuming ourselves the
template, we extrapolate out to G-d. The kind of god you end up with, of
course, depends on the length and direction of the chain of something from
something. A short chain of extrapolation would produce something like the
pantheon of Greek gods, which hardly differ from the human paradigm. A
longer extrapolation will produce a more sophisticated, refined, and less
limited concept of Divinity. Also, as is necessarily the case in a
something from something progression, the kind of god you generate depends
upon the characteristic features of the human template serving as the first
link in the chain. The god of Ayatollah Khomeini is obviously very
different from that of Albert Schweitzer.

Thus, whether a god has (had) a body or whether he (she, they) exists in a
purely spiritual state is a matter of no consequence. He is a
"he", a bigger and better version of man. He is wise, not like
man, but very x10 to the one hundredth power wise. Not only is he good, he
is orders of magnitude better than the best human. In short, he is defined
by qualities or properties, and is, therefore, a something. The extent to
which we cannot know him simply reflects the magnitude of the properties
that define (limit) him.

If the Creator is a somebody/something, then the law of something from
something necessarily would govern the creative process. The universe, for
example, is also a something, the ultimate cause of which is G-d. According
to this line of thought, the universe exists as well as He does.

There exist, therefore, many thingsthe totality of whatever is found in the
universe (stars, neutrons, petunias ... )as well as G-d Himself. He is the
biggest and best something, responsible for all the other somethings, all
of which He can manipulate at will. Nonetheless, they share with Him the
property of independent existence.

The similarity in thinking between the scientific secularists and the
Christian fundamentalists is one of the most fascinating ironies of our
times. Considering, for example, the magnitude and bitterness of the much
publicized battle between evolutionists and creationists, one would
naturally suppose that each side embraces a unique doctrine, antithetical
and inimical to the other. In fact, both schools adhere to classical
something from something orthodoxy. The creationists are no less
evolutionary in their thinking than the evolutionists, and the
evolutionists exhibit no less faith in their selection of initial
assumptions than do the creationists. The differences between the two sides
are essentially semantic. The creationists constantly invoke miracles to
get over the rough spots in their doctrine, whereas the evolutionists
conjure with events the probabilities of which are less than 10 to the
negative thirtieth power.

The Torah view of existence predicated on the principle of something from
nothing is somewhat more difficult to explain than something from something
for the obvious reason that "nothing" defies description and can,
therefore, only be appreciated by means of analogy. One very useful, albeit
imperfect, analogy is creative human thought, an example of which is a
daydream.

It is not uncommon, at a particularly boring faculty meeting, let's say,
for one's mind to wander. One may, for example, begin to contemplate an
upcoming international scientific meeting. In the mind's eye, one envisions
the convention center and the mobs of participants. One sees oneself
delivering a spectacular presentation. The applause is overwhelming.
Hostile journal editors and Medical Research Council members are chastened.
As the dream progresses one can, at will, insert sequences in which
competitors are exposed as frauds or incompetents. In short, you can
fashion reality any way you like.

Indulgence in such pleasant little reveries is common enough, and we don't
give them much thought. The act of daydreaming or imagining does, however,
contain some interesting parallels to the process of creating something
from nothing.

The imaginer, for example, is a creator who has originated a world that did
not exist prior to his thinking it up. He has produced a place, populated
it with people and things, and provided a time scale for the action. The
objection to this analogy is, of course, that the imaginer has, in fact,
created nothing. It is only a thought. It has no existence independent of
himself, and it exists only as long as the thinker/creator actively chooses
to think about it. That, however, is precisely the point. It is a something
that is made out of nothing.

Moreover, all the objects, people, and events which characterize this world
are made out of the same thing, namely thought. The only antecedent to
their existence is the desire of the thinker to think them. The beings who
inhabit the thought world have no independent reality and no intrinsic
stability since they must constantly be brought into existence and animated
by the will of the thinker. If the thinker/creator is bored with imagining
a particular character, he does not have to devise circumstances in which
the offending individual dies (although he may certainly do so). He simply
ceases to imagine him. Similarly, the thinker/creator is not bound by any
necessities, laws, or causes. He can just as easily create a world in which
things fall up as one in which things fall down. He can assume anything he
likes. Shakespeare dreamt up King Lear. In order to get King Lear where
Shakespeare wanted him, namely as a foolish old man, Shakespeare did not
have to imagine his birth, weaning, adolescence, and middle years.
Shakespeare's King Lear is not the product of a series of somethings, e.g.,
an indulgent, permissive mother, poor social skills as a teenager, and so
on. Rather, he is the product of nothing: Shakespeare's unfettered creative
intellect.

The metaphor of creative human thought correlates nicely with many,
although by no means all, aspects of universal creation. The Torah Jew does
not see intelligence and purpose in the design of the universe, but rather,
intelligence and purpose are the stuff of which the universe is made.
People may reasonably expect that unless something very unusual occurs, the
sun will exist five minutes from now. The Torah Jew knows that unless
something unusual happens, the sun will not be here five minutes or even
five seconds from now. The singular event is that the sun's Creator must
trouble Himself to invest it with existence and endow it with definitive
properties by thinking it. The facts that the sun has a long history and
that its present existence is mandated by natural law are irrelevant since
time and natural law are likewise "thoughts" which require
constant attention.

As in the case of the creative thinker, the Creator of the universe is
alone, and the existence of the universe in no way compromises his
"aloneness". Moreover, just as thoughts are united with and
dependent upon the will of the thinker, so are the Creator and His
"thoughts" one. The great statement of Jewish faith, the Sh'ma
("Hear, 0 Israel, the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is One",
Deuteronomy 6:4), which is generally known to be the ultimate expression of
G-d's unity, is understood by many to mean that there is only one G-d.
Although this interpretation is not incorrect, it is trivial, and is,
furthermore, entirely consistent with the something from something doctrine
explained above. The thrust of the Sh'ma is not that there is only one G-d,
but rather that He is all there is. G-d is the only reality. All else, from
the totality of space to a dead leaf blowing around in a backyard, are His
"thoughts" and are absolutely subordinate, in form and content,
to His conscious Will.

Among the many implications of the creation of something from nothing,
perhaps the most important is the tremendous significance that it confers
upon our natural circumstances. Since even the most paltry events require
constant animation by G-d's willed thought, they are obviously of great
importance to G-d; otherwise He would not continually trouble Himself to
actively think them. In addition, given the infinite, unrestrained,
transcendent range of His creativity, the fact that He chose to create our
finite world, with all its minutia, is nothing short of astounding.
Nothing, therefore, is trivial. The existence of a speck of dust requires
the same attention as a galaxy. It follows that the speck of dust is as
essential to the fulfillment of G-d's supernal plan as is the galaxy. There
is G-dly potential and an absolute, transcendent purpose in everything.
Obviously, there is no such thing as happenstance.

Another ramification of the principle of something from nothing relates to
the phenomenology of miracles. There has been much agonizing over the
"problem" of miracles. All sorts of contrived arguments have been
proposed to reconcile miracles with natural events. Such arguments claim
that Mount Sinai was really a volcano, the splitting of the Red Sea was the
product of a tidal wave, and so on. Even more distressing are the tortured
apologetics of religious Jewish scientists who attempt to reconcile
miracles with the natural order by invoking the Uncertainty Principle,
quantum indeterminacy, and the like. These mental gymnastic are, of course,
demanded by adherence to a something from something world view. From the
something from nothing perspective, however, natural law is constantly
brought into existence by Divine free will. Therefore, natural law is not
intrinsically more logical or compelling than a supernatural event. The
Creator can imagine water standing as a wall just as easily as He can endow
it with what are considered its natural properties. In other words, natural
events are no less supernatural than miraculous events. They are simply
much more frequent.

The analogy of creative human thought is only a starting point for the
discussion of universal creation. The analogy is seriously limited. It does
not, for example, address the apparent dissociation between nothing and
something. The world does not look like a collection of thoughts. People
and things appear to be independent realities. Furthermore, according to
the argument developed thus far, G-d's unrestrained creative intellect is
termed the "nothing" by means of which all somethings exist. Why
should such an exalted emanation from the Creator be called nothing? On the
contrary, it is a very big something, since it is the very life of
Creation.

We call G-d's volitional creative intellect "nothing" because we
have no direct access to it and, therefore, it is outside the realm of our
experience. We can't see it, feel it, detect it, measure it, or even
imagine it. Something that one cannot relate to in any way is empirically
"nothing". A person could spend a lifetime in this world without
it ever dawning on him that all is G-dliness. The fact that G-dliness is
inaccessible to us does not, of course, in any way compromise its objective
reality. It is nothing only with respect to us.

As it happens, Divinely willed thought is nothing with respect to the
Creator as well, but for a very different reason. Let us look, once again,
at the daydream metaphor. Given a lifetime of experience and learning, as
well as unlimited imagination, how much of the totality of the daydreamer
is reflected in the daydream? Clearly the "amount" of the
individual's creative intellect invested in the daydream is so miniscule as
to be nothing. Once again, however, this analogy is inadequate because the
Creator is not a human. The extent to which a person transcends a daydream
is truly incomparable to the infinite extent to which the Creator
transcends His Creation.

All of this leaves us with a very disturbing question. If the Creator's
thought is so far beyond our grasp as to be nothing, and if it is so
infinitely beneath His essence as to be nothing, does not this preclude any
relationship between Him and us? Between His Being and our being is an
endless and bottomless sea of nothing.

Indeed, from our side, He is completely beyond reach. Whatever relationship
we have with Him can only be established from His side. We can only know of
Him what He chooses to reveal to us, and remarkably, He has chosen to
reveal quite a bit. This is the miracle of Torah. Torah bridges the
immeasurable distance between the Creator and the Creation.

How and why His infinite, essential Will (which reflects Himself) is
enclothed in Torah, is unknowable. How a five year-old child studying
Chumash (Bible) with Rashi commentary is able to grasp the ungraspable
essence of his Creator cannot be explained. How the binding of tefillin
(phylacteries) on the head and arm unites the essence of the Jew with the
essence of G-d cannot be understood. How seemingly trivial objects such as
matzah (unleavened bread) or an etrog (citron) can serve, at specified
times, as vessels with which to capture Divinity and reveal it in time and
space is unfathomable. It is, after all, His Torah.

The Torah, then, is at the heart of the something from nothing position.
All the something from something theorists approach causality from their
own perspectives and on their own terms. Judaism, which is at odds with
everyone and everything else, is based on the truth that G-d is not a
something, and therefore if He is to be approached at all, it must be from
His perspective and on His terms.


http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article.asp?AID=92123

On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:41:55 -0600, John Cuccia 
wrote in message :

>On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:47:33 -0500, "Robert Comer"
> wrote:
>
>>How could it exist otherwise?
>
>How could God exist otherwise?  That is, suppose the universe *is*
>God?  That would help reconcile physics with metaphysics, and ID with
>evolution (although one could certainly question the IQ of the
>Designer).  Once you stop thinking of God as something external to the
>universe, then an eternal universe isn't so unthinkable.
>
>>It seems like a scientific copout to say that it's just always been there,
>
>I wasn't saying, I was just asking why you though there had to be a
>"first" universe.  Eternity goes both ways.
>
>>no scientifically verifiable proof, just a leap of faith. (sound familiar?
>>)
>
>Sure it's a leap of faith.  We will probably always be unable to see
>beyond the singularity that created the particular instance that is
>us.
>>
>>--
>>Bob Comer
>>
>>
>>"John Cuccia"  wrote in message
>>news:bl89n1926kqu5n3kvgsu09uq8o5man3jpo{at}4ax.com...
>>> Why?
>>>
>>> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 06:51:18 -0500, "Robert Comer"
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>>There had to be something to begin with.
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Bob Comer
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>"John Cuccia"  wrote in message
>>>>news:o658n1lofjau2ihqj3enucgo54riposng6{at}4ax.com...
>>>>> On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:41:27 -0500, "Robert Comer"
>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> No, that's just the way it was first
described, then they suggested
>>>>>>> scalar
>>>>>>> fields could allow universes to bubble off
each other and now there is
>>>>>>> probably some new theory.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Still the same, where did the first universe come
from -- it had to be a
>>>>>>big
>>>>>>bang type event if you go by that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Who says there was a first universe?
>>>>
>>

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