Why could “any human reader . . . tell the difference”? There are many, many humans who will tailor their response to fit the person who asked the question, and who lack the capacity (or perhaps the desire) “to sort out truth from error or to judge the quality of the sources”.
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How did this go for you?
Maybe we can turn part of this chat into a private discussion, as this doesn’t seem to have much to do with science and faith anymore, at least directly.
That’s fine. The discussion is all over the place. I would love to get back to talking about the science and philosophy of creation. @RoyC wrote this which I agree with:
My background is in classical apologetics and I had a solid introduction to it with R.C. Sproul’s Defending Your Faith series. People can easily misjudge the comprehensive philosophical genius that Sproul brings to the conversation. So that was my introduction to philosophy before doing a philosophy undergrad at a local university.
In the series, Sproul says that every explanation of the universe will reduce to 4 possible statements (not that all the statements are possible): from nothing, from an infinite regress, from an uncaused cause, and self-caused.
Now a friend of mine learned classical apologetics at Dallas Theological Seminary with Geisler, and one day I was talking to him on the phone and telling him about how I was working with an argument that atheism can be disproven but then theism cannot be proven because solipsism remains a rational possibility. He was in disbelief and proceeded to tell me what the 4 possible statements can be. No kidding, when the words, “self-caused” were uttered by him, he got quiet really long. What’s funny is I don’t remember what we said after that. I didn’t force the conversation and probably let it go. We still talk every few years. So maybe now would be a good time to revisit that 
- The difficulties that I have with the assertion in this thread’s title are that:
- A “nothing” that is something is not, literally, a nothing;
- “The universe” that supposedly “can and will create itself” is not defined, IMO: i.e. is it bounded or unbounded; and
- “Can and will create itself” suggest to me an act of purpose, intent, and motive, no?
- Lawrence Krauss’ assumed, a priori, Quantum stuff is not, IMO, literally nothing. A universe that creates itself, whether from nothing or from something, sure doesn’t sound like a literal nothing to me.
- And the notion that a purpose, intention, or motive could arise in a literal nothing boggles my mind.
- Krauss seems to be hellbent on denying God while assuming Quantum stuff that spontaneously does an “agent” might do.
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Based on my recent experience with ChatGPT, that quote from Krauss may have been pulled out of a vacuous air 
My experience with Google’s Bard and a math subreddit today was an exceptional display of how convincing the program can be and how utterly wrong it can also be… then again… those math people speak a totally different language, so I still had to take their word that a set of real numbers between two numerical values has the same cardinality of the set of all real values.
The idea that something could create itself is incoherent because it would have to exist already in order to cause anything.
I think that what we can say, is that its certain the something is self-existent. Here’s why. Consider the sum total of reality. The sum total of reality must be self-existent in part or whole, because there’s nothing else it could depend on. We have 3 major world religions that say its the whole that is self-existent nd all parts reality are made of and depend on the whole: Hinduism, Buddhism, & Taoism. We have 3 major world religions that say its one of the parts of reality that’s self-existent, the part called God. And that part has created all the other parts: Judaism, Christianity, & Islam. We also have naturalism, which is a world view rather than a religion, but which still regards something as self-existent: either nature taken as a whole or some part of the natural world.
So if we understand the divine reality to be that on who h all the rest of reality depends, then all these traditions are centered around competing divinity beliefs. So while it is certain that something is divine (is what everything else depends on), it’s highly controversial as to just WHAT or WHO the divine reality is.
Wat denk je?
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Right now I’m thinking about three things, no pun intended. I’m remembering how as a child I would have these geometric visions and they would make me feel uneasy, then there was the 4 hour introduction I listened to last year on Indian philosophy from Oxford University Press, and then there was Geisler’s statement that the hard thing to prove is you are not the eternal necessary being.
Well, I’m thinking about some other things… oh yeah, I almost forgot, did you notice the word play on “self-caused” and “solipsism”? That’s what my friend picked up on from the telephone conversation.
I did notice that, yes. Bertrand Russell once commented that solipsism solves many philosophical problems, but is “a desperate remedy.” I think everyone has a sense of his or her finitude and mortality.
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Thanks for the Russell reference. I’m going to save that.
Even if a person were led to believe this world is a dream by extraordinary circumstances, the thing which is inescapable is the terrific loneliness that solipsism entails… an emptiness in being which causes the dream
The other thing, which I kept seeing in the intro to Indian philosophy, is how easy it is to describe metaphysical solipsism while disguising it with a plural pronoun. “Being like God is something that we all are capable of.”
Right! If solipsism were true, why write anything at all?
It would be something to write about it as a possibility alongside theism. And by chance, and this is a big if, it were related to the problem of proving or disproving the continuum hypothesis, that would really be something.
For once, I agree with Russell. The existence of “other minds” is wired into our evolution. Chimps have first-level Theory of Mind, among who knows how many other species. Just because solipsism can’t be disproved doesn’t mean anyone actually believes it. Pascal was a contemporary of Descartes (scepticism/solipsism) and had this to say:
What then shall man do in this state? Shall he doubt everything? Shall he doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched, or whether he is being burned? Shall he doubt whether he doubts? Shall he doubt whether he exists? We cannot go so far as that; and I lay it down as a fact that there never has been a real complete sceptic. Nature sustains our feeble reason, and prevents it raving to this extent.
Shall he then say, on the contrary, that he certainly possesses truth—he who, when pressed ever so little, can show no title to it, and is forced to let go his hold?
What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!
Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What then will you become, O men! who try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one of these sects, nor adhere to one of them.
Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.
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Thanks. I’m a big fan of Pascal. On the same topic he also wrote: We know we do not dream however unable we are to prove it. That inability shows the weakness of our reasoning not the doubtfulness of our knowledge.
We know truth not only by reasoning but also by intuitions of the heart… such as the first principles of number, time, space, and motion. And reason must trust these intuitions and base all its resigning upon them… Therefore, those to whom God has given religion by intuition are truly blessed.
(The quotes are not word-for-word but are close).
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The value in understanding the rational possibility of solipsism, is being able to call out a solipsistic spirituality that falsely presumes upon the existence of other people.
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Supposedly there is a rich theological tradition that quotes Augustine on the connection between John 20:29 and 1 John 2:27. I haven’t been able to confirm this yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.
Edit: There is also a neat correspondence between John 20:30-31 and 1 John 2:26
I don’t know of such a tradition, but if you discover one please let me know.
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Unfortunately, I looked up the references I had and struck out on all counts. Augustine does seem to go there while writing on 1 John 2:27-28, he says, “we believe in Jesus whom we have not seen.”
William Lane Craig has spoken about the internal testimony of the Spirit, which is what I see John 20:29 and 1 John 2:27 being in reference to. This is a good explanation from Craig:
By that I mean that the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable (though not necessarily irresistible or indubitable) for him who has it; that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God; that such experience does not function in this case as a premiss in any argument from religious experience to God, but rather is the immediate experiencing of God himself; that in certain contexts the experience of the Holy Spirit will imply the apprehension of certain truths of the Christian religion, such as “God exists,” “I am condemned by God,” “I am reconciled to God,” “Christ lives in me,” and so forth; that such an experience provides one not only with a subjective assurance of Christianity’s truth, but with objective knowledge of that truth; and that arguments and evidence incompatible with that truth are overwhelmed by the experience of the Holy Spirit for him who attends fully to it.
I agree completely with Craig’s remarks, but would phrase what is in parentheses this way: “though not always irresistible or indubitable.” In fact I’m defending this as there religious experience that justifies belief in God in the book ms I’ve just completed, titled: Can We KNOW God Is Real? That is where I wrote “God is not the conclusion of a argument but the subject of an experience report.”
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