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What Is Nothing?

August 31, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

My mind was blown today by the fantabulous 1973 short "What Is Nothing?" featuring some stoned grade schoolers wondering about the different types of non-existence. It features Rifftrax commentary to make it tolerable, and can be experienced if you have a buck to spare: More info on the video, including sample clip. Because caterpillars matter to caterpillars, man!

If you are too cheap for that, I see William Lane Craig has an audio clip where he reads a listener's question about the nothing and then proceeds to not answer it until about 2:40: there is no nothing, because it's all God. Craig distinguishes (as we do on our episode #43 between two versions of the cosmological argument: a chain of chronological causes and a chain of explanatory causes, but doesn't seem to make a coherent point about why the former type of argument doesn't make any sense. Despite a good pile of name dropping (and finding a bit from the Odyssey as hysterical!), I'm not sure I find the dialogue on this bit of podcast much more enlightening than the stoned kids' quiet contemplation.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Filed Under: Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts, Things to Watch Tagged With: Daniel Lane Craig, nothingness, philosophy blog, rifftrax

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