This post arises from my last, which was an argument for the existence of God from the impossibility of absolute nothingness. The hinge of the argument, its fulcrum, was in this paragraph:
To say [that, it being impossible that there should be no state of affairs whatever, so then some state of affairs must be necessary] is to say only, and exactly, that God is necessary. For, there are innumerable states of affairs in which this or that comes to pass contingently, but not necessarily. All those contingent passages and states of affairs are, by definition, not necessary. … But there is and must be a basic state of affairs that is necessary, and *not contingent;* in no other way could it be possible for other states of affairs to continge.
The idea is that, absolute nothingness being an incoherent concept, thus ontologically impossible, there must necessarily be some state of affairs; but that any contingent state of affairs, being not itself necessary, cannot be among the states of affairs that must necessarily be; so that, the mere fact that there must necessarily be some state of affairs entails that there must be a state of affairs that is in itself necessary.
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