From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 8:16 AM
To: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures.

"Paul Holbach" <heir-of-holbach@freenet.de> wrote:

> nothing qua being nothing cannot prevent
> anything from becoming something.

But why would anything "become something"? Why would this
be exempt from the Principle of Sufficient Reason?  And
does your use of "become" imply some suspiciously a prior
notion of temporality?

> So there might well be inherent
> probabilistic propensities of "nothingness" (though according to
> physics there is no literally absolute emptiness) which are capable of
> initiating a self-transformation into ontological "somethingness".

We should not delude ourselves that any laws or principles of
our physics are ontologically necessary.  That is, we can always
ask why physics is the way it is instead of some other way.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net