Richard Carrier's response to "ex nihilo, nihil fit"

I'm not sure if this will help:

"If there was truly nothing, the absence of everything, the wouldn't also be the law of 'ex nihilo, nihil fit' So something can come from nothing"

Assuming that the first, conditional statement is true, the second conclusion, if we were to grant that it followed, would follow from the antecedent condition of the conditional statement, not from the conditional statement itself. It would be better stated as: Therefore, IF there was truly nothing, the absence of everything, then something could come from nothing.

Next are at least two questions: Is the first conditional statement true? And, if it were true, would it somehow follow that something could come from nothing? The answer to either of these questions is far from obvious.

/r/askphilosophy Thread