Not From Nothing But From the Depths of Our Shared Becoming
“Not all propositions, religions, or sciences are equally true. But any of them that may be communicating something, not nothing, we need to hear. Any, therefore, may enrich the fabulous multiplicity of the creation itself. If our truths, even truths about “the creation,” matter now—then they may materialize carefully, not from nothing but from the depths of our shared becoming. A profundity of nonsense? Or perhaps a sense of the profound that precedes and exceeds what human knowledge can master. We have here no neon certainty but—no matter what chaos we face—a darkly luminous faith” – Catherine Keller, Theologies of Creation
A facebook friend recently posed a fun question in the Process Studies facebook group: Can process metaphysics explain why there is something rather than nothing? Such a classic philosophical/theological quandary! It’s almost impossible to catch the metaphysical assumptions…
My initial response was this:
“…doesn’t the question of “why is there something rather than nothing?” assume an adherence to a creatio ex nihilo type of doctrine? In a process framework this doctrine makes no sense because there’s always been something, or that is, there has never been nothing… Keller’s tehomic creatio ex profundis makes more sense for process thinkers like myself probably”
My interlocutor responded:
“No, this question does not necessarily assume an adherence to creatio ex nihilo. But it does assume an adherence to the principle of sufficient reason.”
I went on to elaborate a bit more:
“This response won’t explain your question to your satisfaction of course because the question doesn’t make sense in a process framework. For me I guess it’s kinda like asking a windows user a question about a Mac only game; the Mac only game question is probably a good question about a good game but it makes zero sense to people using other systems, ya know?”
After this comment I was accused of circular reasoning and the same substance metaphysics question was posed again:
“That’s begging the question. Why should it be the case that only an eternal process should exist rather than nothing at all?”
My final two responses follow:
“Yeah again, that’s just one of the premises assumed by a process framework, as far as I understand things… And since eternal process is axiomatic in the system we’re talking about (process metaphysics) it’s not fallacious to respond to the question of “why is there something rather than nothing ” (which again is usually a question that arises out of a substance based creatio ex nihilo mindset) by saying “I don’t adhere to creatio ex nihilo” haha! It’s not circular reasoning just like the statement “people like to eat because we are biologically influenced to eat” is not begging the question since the premise is generally reasonable to assume; i.e. being biologically influenced to eat is indeed one legitimate explanation/response (it’s a scientific materialistic response) to the question “why do humans like to eat?”. Eternal process is a reasonable assumption to make about the nature of things. Likewise, assuming that there was once nothing and then there was something is also reasonable to assume I suppose but, if one is a prone to thinking deeply about things, making this assumption gets you stuck with difficult questions like “why is there something rather than nothing,” lol!”
“With regard to your comment about sufficient reason, a tehomic creatio ex profundis type of panentheism like I’ve been describing here would be consistent with both a self-subsisting cosmos and a self-subsisting deity, both possibly explicable without reference to transcending causes, intelligible simply by understanding their respective components. All good metaphysical systems are going to have some type of non-logical axiomatic statement, dictum or postulate, so all I’ve really been saying here is that because of the starting place of (my version of) process metaphysics the problem/question you pose is not really as meaningful to a process thinker, perhaps, as the questions of how things appear to endure through time or how many experiences combine to form one unified experience (the combination problem) might be; i.e. I know in mathematics that if one starts with different axioms they get a different kind of mathematics, so it seems reasonable to assume different starting places in philosophy would lead folks in different directions and generate different problems/questions.”
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Painting above by Betony Coons
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