# Nobody plus nothing equals everything **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 11, 2014, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847 "2014-07-11T13:44:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/21 "2014-07-12T00:04:53Z")
I think it’s actually nobody minus nothing over the square root of nowhere. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/22 "2014-07-12T00:28:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > “Build a humongous boat, fill it full of wild animals and go for a cruise” sounds more like Loki to me. …or Jiminy Cricket? -d&r- ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/23 "2014-07-12T00:33:20Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > I don’t think the charismatic moron is mocking E = MC2, he’s just mocking the idea that everything sprang from nothing without someone (God) making that happen. That is really a quite ignorant assumption. If the existence f humanity proves the existence of God then who made God? It would be the next step in the logic chain. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/24 "2014-07-12T01:38:40Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > That’s why any serious version of the [Cosmological Argument](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Argument) begins with a version of the premise like “Every **finite and contingent** being has a cause” or “Whatever **begins to exist** has a cause.” Looks like begging the question to me. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/25 "2014-07-12T02:51:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Looks like begging the question to me. I can see why you might say that. But (1) Begging the question is not a fallacy in the sense that an argument based on it is invalid.\* The argument is still valid; it’s just that the conclusion is contained within the premise(s). But _if_ you find that premise to be true, or at least plausible (and I think at least some people do), you still have to accept the conclusion as true, or plausible. (2) The versions of the premise that I quoted are weaker assumptions than the premise in “your” form of the argument. I don’t see anything inherently objectionable in weakening a premise in order to make an argument work. For example, if you tried to prove a statement about all real numbers, only to hit a contradiction based on division by zero, you might still be able to salvage the proof by reframing the statement as being about all _nonzero_ real numbers. That’s my own reply. After coming up with it, I did a bit of googling to see whether anyone else had argued for or against your contention that this was question-begging. One site I found was [this](http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html). First of all, its author rubbed me the wrong way by indulging in this bit of chronological chauvinism: > [@](#): > > The old cosmological argument claimed that since everything has a cause, there must be a first cause, an “unmoved first mover.” Today no theistic philosophers defend that primitive line because if everything needs a cause, so does God. —as though all earlier theistic philosophers were too dumb to notice such an obvious objection to the “old cosmological argument.” But my main objection is to his claim in the section “Does Kalam Beg the Question?” that the cosmological argument _assumes_ that NBE (the set of things that do not have a beginning) is non-empty. I think he’s flat-out wrong about that: I don’t see how any such assumption is necessary, going in, in order to make the argument work. Furthermore, theology has long considered God to be eternal, so the idea of God not having a beginning is not just something made up to prop up an otherwise faulty argument. [Another site I found](http://www.theaunicornist.com/2013/03/the-ten-worst-objections-to-kalam_2.html), however, may be onto something. This writer (if I understand him correctly) identifies the question-begging in the assumption of causality. When we state that everything (or everything that has a beginning, or however we want to qualify it) has a cause, we’re saying so based on our own experience of how the world works. But all our experience is with an ongoing universe, and it may not be a fair assumption to extend it to the beginning of the very universe itself. So at that point, I’m inclined to agree that there is some question-begging involved in the argument. \*(If this point needs further explanation, see [here](http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html), the first bullet point in the “Exposure” section.) ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/26 "2014-07-12T11:36:27Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I think it’s actually nobody minus nothing over the square root of nowhere. He’s a real Nowhere Man, sitting in his Nowhere Land, making all his Nowhere Plans for Nobody… Carry on. **Thudlow** - isn’t that a lot of…_thinking_ for a thread that is really about a smug twit making a smug twitticism? If folks like the topic of Why is there Something rather than Nothing? There is a great exploration of the religious, scientific and philosophical approaches to answering that question in this book: > **[Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story: Holt, Jim:...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-World-Exist-Existential/dp/0871403595)** > > Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story \[Holt, Jim\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2014, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/27 "2014-07-12T20:19:07Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > If folks like the topic of Why is there Something rather than Nothing? There is a great exploration of the religious, scientific and philosophical approaches to answering that question in this book: \< . . . \> For Yet Another view on the question “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”, see: [Smullyan, Raymond. What Is The Name Of This Book?](http://control7.net/downloads/What-is-the-Name-of-this-Book.pdf) (PDF. Full text.) Starting on page 135, chapter entitled “Part Three: Weird Tales: The Island of Baal”. A philosopher makes it his life’s work to find the answer to this question, and in his adventures, must solve a litany of Truth-Teller / Liar logic questions! Legend has it that Leibniz came up with this answer: There are infinitely many ways that Something could exist, but only one way that Nothing could exist. Therefore, the probability is certainty that Something will exist in one or another of its possible forms. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/28 "2014-07-14T13:21:57Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > Notice that those voicing a pithy maxim seem to take great pride in doing so; they may sincerely think that speaking them is proof of righteous alignment with Eternal Truths. If you can say it in a one-liner, then it must be true! With good reason… because it works. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, to paraphrase HL Mencken. Another quote from Mencken, appropriate for this thread: “When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.” ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/29 "2014-07-14T13:36:36Z")
I’d think that “everything plus nobody = everything” is something intellectual atheists could get behind. ---
**Author:** ![dba\_Fred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c37758/32.png) [@dba\_Fred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dba_Fred)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/30 "2014-07-14T13:51:03Z")
While [nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MluxWirpKc) aka the Billy Preston Law. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/31 "2014-07-14T16:55:08Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Turns out Captain America was wrong after all. hey - I got that. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2014, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847/32 "2014-07-14T20:14:28Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > With good reason… because it works. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, to paraphrase HL Mencken. > Another quote from Mencken, appropriate for this thread: “When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.” If only ol’ Menck’s cynicism weren’t so often validated by real-world events. It’s a perennial problem of democracy. Of course the problem can be somewhat ameliorated by thorough and comprehensive public education. That the American right is busily trying to eliminate public education might be considered to be evidence of conspiracy–but it’s probably simply greed (for the transfer of public funds into private pockets; which is another thread entirely). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-plus-nothing-equals-everything/692847.md?page=1)