Nothing (General)

by dhw, Monday, November 30, 2009, 14:47 (5284 days ago) @ George Jelliss

On the Stenger site, under GOD: THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS, I see he comes up with one of those hackneyed arguments ... like God-of-the Gaps ... which get trotted out as if they actually meant something significant. He writes: "Not only does the universe show no evidence for God, it looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is no God." The same silly claim is often applied to life and to evolution.-How the heck does anyone know what a universe/life/evolution would look like if there is or isn't a God? This is the only universe/life/evolution we know. In other words, we can't "expect" anything, because there's no precedent for us to base expectations on. Or have Stenger et al. been on mystical trips to other worlds?-À propos of nothing, let me ask a naïve question, which has been asked many times but the answer to which I have never understood. If the Big Bang really did take place, and if the universe was created "ex nihilo", what went bang?