21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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which that creation was summoned, and towards which its fluency falls. That alternative milieu, neither being nor nonbeing, will signify the site of becoming as genesis; the topos of the Deep. Can we tell the story this way; that tehom (the deep) as primal chaos precedes and gives rise to the generative tensions of order and disorder, form and formlessness? Might tehom henceforth suggest the chaoid (so not necessarily chaotic) multidimensionality of a bottomless Deep; the matrix in which the creation becomes? In which the strange inter-fluences of creatures — in ecology, predation, cultures — crisscross the abyss of difference?

Catherine Keller — Face of the Deep — A Theology of Becoming.

In similar vein, the Buddhist tradition recognises the concept of ‘Sunyata’. It is described thus:

‘To call it being is wrong, because only concrete things exist. To call it non-being is wrong. It is best to avoid all description…. It is the basis of all. The absolute, the truth that cannot be preached in words.’

Heinrich Zimmer — Philosophies of India.

Generally speaking, science favours creation ‘ex nihilo’. If some previously-existing chaotic state were envisaged, then science presumably would feel the need to explain this somehow. In balance, although creation out of a literal nothing is not an entirely satisfactory explanation, it is probably preferable and less messy for science than order out of chaos. On the basis of Occam’s Razor — science inevitably opts for this simpler answer. Already, on a small scale, such ‘creation’ is accepted, as when

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