Ex Nihilo Quotes

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic. ~ Jonah Lehrer

When religious believers invoke miracles and acts of creation ex nihilo, that is the end of the search for them, whereas for scientists, the identification of such mysteries is only the beginning. Science picks up where theology leaves off. ~ Michael Shermer

We must point out that in what concerns its material the event is not a miracle. What I mean is that what composes an event is always extracted from a situation, always related back to a singular multiplicity, to its state, to the language that is connected to it, etc. In fact, so as not to succumb to an obscurantist theory of creation ex nihilo, we must accept that an event is nothing but a part of a given situation, nothing but a fragment of being. ~ Alain Badiou

Yet a much more fundamentally political dimension of the socially constructed nature of capital - nothing less than the specification of a parallel universe with its own natural laws and rules for the physical existence and subsistence of financial capital and its interaction with the other factors of production - has also often been overlooked in contemporary academic literature. Under the current monetary arrangements financial capital is a peculiar creature indeed. Money can be created ex nihilo at the stroke of a pen - or a keyboard - by a specific type of legal person entrusted with the task, not other legal or natural person. With the socially constructed ability to attract compound interest in a world where physical assets rot and break, it does not share the same physical reality with the mere mortal factors of production: even in cases where productive investments which enable the payment of interest in real terms can be identified, the compounding of interest on financial capital is not temporally limited to the period that the relevant physical assets can continue to produce exponential returns in real terms. Rather than representing accumulated wealth that could be "saved" to finance investment, the bulk of money disappears as soon as other factors of production are not willing to pay a tribute to induce its continuing circulation in the form of interest payments. In addition to the inherently political nature of specifications of money have been detached from vir ~ Tero Auvinen

A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples and subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis. ~ Henry F. Schaefer, III

Here departs from his master, and holds that the spheres and the intellects had a beginning, and were brought into existence by the will of the Creator. He does not attempt to give a positive proof of his doctrine; all he contends is that the theory of the creatio ex nihilo is, from a philosophical point of view, not inferior to the doctrine which asserts the eternity of the universe, and that he can refute all objections advanced against his theory (ch. xiii.-xxviii.). ~ Maimonides

There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before [the Big Bang] and were suddenly galvanized into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity? It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo-Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness. ~ E. T. Whittaker

What is the difference between "creator" and "craftsman"? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing - ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it - and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. ~ Pope John Paul II

Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. [An infinitely old universe, always evolving may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end.] Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science. ~ Hannes Alfven

You do not create ex nihilo. You rearrange and recombine. You are the same old flour and eggs in search of a new recipe. ~ Douglas Wilson

The first theological insight I learned from Gregory of Nyssa - and I suspect the last to which I shall cling when all others fall away - is that the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not merely a cosmological or metaphysical claim, but also an eschatological claim about the world's relation to God, and hence a moral claim about the nature of God in himself. In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them forth from nothingness.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) ~ David Bentley Hart

The new is preceded by the destruction of the old, that which has become guilty, and not out of the possebilities which we possess, but in the impossible situation which confronts us, that the new shows itself as God's creative act. God's new reality is always like a novum ex nihilo. When all hopes have died, there comes the wave of the future like a spirit of resurrection into the dead bones (Ezek. 37), creating hope against hope. ~ Jurgen Moltmann

I still believe, though. In existing. In ex nihilo nihil fit. If nothing comes from nothing, we cannot return to it. Ergo life has a reason and needs to be. ~ Lavie Tidhar