Nothing comes from nothing

By: José Azel - 2022/03/07

College students of philosophy are entranced by the philosophical dictum of “Nothing comes from nothing” (ex nihilo nihil fit) first argued by Parmenides. In its modern connotation, the dictum has profound religious implications.

To Parmenides all matter was uncreated and eternal; therefore, the universe had no beginning.

In contrast, the writers of the book of Genesis believed that the universe had not always existed. To them, the universe was created, in the past, by an all-powerful God. Until 1929, many scientists sided with Parmenides believing that the universe was indeed eternal.

This view, of an uncreated eternal universe, was challenged by astronomer Edwin Hubble who noticed that the universe was expanding. Hubble's hypothesis was confirmed in 1965 by other astronomers who demonstrated that the universe is in a state of cosmic expansion and must have had a beginning – the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory lends support to the theological doctrine of creation from nothing. That is, God created the universe with the Big Bang.

My appreciation to the reader still with me after this abstruse introduction. A philosophical discussion of “nothing comes from nothing” is well outside the scope of this column, but I find the phrase applicable to discussing more down-to-earth wonders like the origin of freedom.

So, if nothing comes from nothing, where does freedom come from? An unsatisfying answer is that freedom comes from God. This leads to questions such as: why has a loving God not allowed freedom to flourish in most of His world? After all, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau reminded us in the opening sentence of “The Social Contract” (1762): “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”

We normally understand freedom as independence from the arbitrary will of another. Our epistemological understanding of freedom recognizes that the future is unknown and unknowable. Therefore, our survival depends on the ability to react to changing circumstances. This we are able to do in free societies. Freedom enables us to make decisions that impact our future, to make mistakes, and to learn from them. Freedom enables our moral growth; yet freedom has many detractors.

Some philosophical attacks on freedom are thought-provoking. For example, if freedom comes from God, and God is omniscient, He already knows what will happen in the future. This line of thinking leads to the notion of predestination. If our future is predestined, human freedom is a deception. Freedom and predestination are unreconcilable concepts.

A different philosophical attack claims that, since the universe is governed by laws of cause and effect, the future is already deterministically decided. That is, all decisions we make are predetermined by physical laws. So, according to disbelievers of freedom, predestination or predetermination make freedom an illusion.

A third theoretical attack on the idea of human freedom argues that our idea of freedom, is nothing more than an arbitrary product of our environment and upbringing. These arguments, and others, have been used by detractors of freedom to undermine our responsibilities and to justify taking away our freedoms. As George Bernard Shaw put it: “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

In 1958 political theorist Isaiah Berlin complicated the question of freedom even further with his lecture “Two Concepts of Freedom.” Berlin made a distinction between negative and positive freedoms. In Berlin's analysis negative freedom is understood as freedom 'from' interference by others, and positive freedom, or freedom 'to', is understood as freedom to act.

The politics of freedom 'to' are exemplified by Marxists views in which being free -in the 'to' sense- implies that individuals are not responsible for deciding what is best for them and the state must decide on their behalf. This justifies the use of oppression and coercion by the state to achieve a desired distribution of society's output. So, for Marxists, freedom comes from the government.

Yet, nothing comes from nothing, and as free persons we have the opportunity of making decisions and bearing the consequences of our choices. Freedom is a mystery, but it is not an illusion. Freedom comes from our choices.

Dr. Azel's latest book is “Liberty for Beginners.”

“The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author”.