Their only flaw was their absence, and even their nonexistence". Something of the same theme--the difficult dialogue of present and past--pervades the book's second section, a series of imaginary monologues, each in a different persona.
Gorampa argues that to conceive of something as "neither existent nor nonexistent" is to conceive of something that is somewhere between the two extremes of existence and nonexistence.
Avicenna explains the superiority of a highest type of efficient cause as follows: Where something is such that, whenever it exists, it produces the existence of something else by virtue of its own essence, and where its effect exists after absolute nonexistence and is permanent, then that thing has a higher claim to causality than other things.
Avicenna also recognizes an intermediate type of efficient cause: This third type gives being to an effect that does not exist after absolute nonexistence or after a specific privation in matter; rather the existence of this effect is preceded by the existence of something else, which is non-material.
But though the fact that something's existence is necessary for the existence of something else holds for certain properties (for example, the existence of children is necessary for someone to be a parent), it is doubtful that something's existence is necessary for something else's nonexistence per se, which is what is needed to support the argument that denies the contingency of the universe.
Hartshorne's Platonic or Bergsonian argument against creation ex nihilo, in simplified form, looks something like this: one can in fact imagine the nonexistence of this or that, or even of this or that class of things, a fact that gives some the confidence to (erroneously) think that this process can go on infinitely such that one could imagine a state in which there was "absolutely nothing".
The nonexistence of WMDs was the first blow.
Ma 1983 John N. Mather; Nonexistence of Invariant Circles; Ergod.
Ten years ago, the nonexistence of the New York Times was as unimaginable a thought as the nonexistence of the Roman Catholic Church.
The theory of evolution says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of God.
