The ideas of creatio ex nihilo of the universe and creatio continua of new matter out of nothing entered the arena of natural science with the advent of the Big Bang and the steady-state theories in the mid-twentieth century. Adolf Grünbaum has tried to interpret the steady-state theory in such a way, to show that the continuous formation of new matter out of nothing in this theory can be explained purely physically. In this paper, however, it will be shown that (...) Grünbaum's interpretation encounters at least three problems: not distinguishing between material and efficient causes, inconsistency, and misconceiving the law of density conservation. (shrink)

In earlier writings, I argued that neither of the two major physical cosmologies of the 20th century support divine creation, so that atheism has nothing to fear from the explanations required by these cosmologies. Yet theists ranging from Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Leibniz to Richard Swinburne and Philip Quinn have maintained that, at every instant anew, the existence of the world requires divine creation ex nihilo as its cause. Indeed, according to some such theists, for any given moment t. God's (...) volition that the-world-should-exist-at-t supposedly brings about its actual existence at t. In an effort to reestablish the current viability of this doctrine of perpetual divine conservation. Philip Quinn argued (1993) that it is entirely compatible with physical energy conservation in the Big Bang cosmology, as well as with the physics of the steady-state theories. But I now contend that instead, there is a logical incompatibility on both counts. Besides, the stated tenet of divine conservation has an additional defect: It speciously purchases plausibility by trading on the multiply disanalogous volitional explanations of human actions. (shrink)