Michael Egnor: Atheism as a "Foreign Influence" on Science
By: Mind Matters
There is an increasing openness and acceptance of spirituality among scientists. It is unknown whether more scientists are embracing spiritualty or only that scientists with spiritual beliefs feel they can be more open. Either way the global phenomena marks a clear shift in the relationship between science and spirituality.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Late last month, Michael Egnor, first author of The Immortal Mind (Worthy, June 3, 2025), appeared on the Ex-Skeptic podcast, which features "unlikely stories of belief":
In a story-driven, conversational podcast and a library of videos and testimonies, Jana Harmon interviews former atheists and encourages both skeptics and Christians to consider what motivates thoughtful, intelligent people to move from disbelief to belief.
Doubting Naturalism – Dr. Michael Egnor’s Story Jana Harmon 25 September 2025 • 63 mins (Also available at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.)
Dr. Michael Egnor spent decades trusting science to answer life's deepest questions. As a neurosurgeon and professor, he believed the brain held the key to understanding everything — including who we are. But over time, he encountered things science couldn't explain: children thriving with missing brain structures, moral truths that couldn't be reduced to biology, and a growing sense that materialism had serious gaps.
Dr. Egnor shares how philosophical honesty, scientific curiosity, and a surprising moment of divine encounter opened him to a new possibility that God not only exists, but that the Christian story offers the best explanation for the human mind, moral law, and the universe itself.
From the podcast:
Michael Egnor: [28:29] Christianity played an enormous role in the development of science. Isaac Newton (1642-1747 ) wrote more about the book of Daniel than he wrote about mathematics and physics. He was a passionate Christian, a little unorthodox in his own way, but he was passionately Christian.
If you look at the work of James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) or Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) who pioneered the understanding of of electromagnetism. They were passionately Christian. These are these are people their faith was the center of their life. theoretical science, understanding the Big Bang, cosmology, physics, chemistry, that's almost entirely from the Christian West. So, Christianity is the foundation of science.
Atheism … particularly in the 20th century, has moved into the scientific world and taken over parts of it. So, I see atheism as kind of a foreign influence on science and atheists have basically moved into the scientific profession and tried to get rid of Christians in the scientific profession even though modern science is essentially a product of Christian theology and Christian philosophy.
After all, why would you look for order and structure and purpose in the world if you didn't believe that it came from a rational mind, from God's mind. If you think that everything happened for no reason, why would you look for reasons? Why would you look at the natural world that way.
Egnor goes on to say that after he came to faith he wanted to explore the way that God's mind was instrumental in creating the reality we live in.
How educated people come to doubt atheism
Harmon, a teaching fellow for the C.S. Lewis Institute of Atlanta, is also the author of Atheists Finding God (2023):
Data was collected through both survey and interview of fifty educated, skeptical atheists in the contemporary West who once held belief God and Christianity as implausible, unattractive, and irrelevant. Yet, they became utterly convinced that the Christian faith was true and good, worth personal life commitment. These former atheists not only experienced a change of their worldview, but also a dramatic transformation of their 'whole world.' In-depth narrative analysis revealed the integrated, transformative nature of religious conversion in areas of sense-making, identity, experience, meaning and purpose, community, language, and spirituality. Overall, this book advances the case for using an inclusive, transformational perspective in future description, conception, and modeling for religious conversion of atheists to conservative forms of Christianity. - From the Publisher
Renewal of faith in science venues?
Harmon and Egnor appear to be onto something. At The Times, science editor Ben Spencer reports on a thought-provoking new book, coming out in mid-October in English, by two French authors:
Science and religion have never been easy bedfellows. As Thomas Jefferson put it in 1820, priests "dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight". Five centuries of scientific breakthroughs — from Galileo to Darwin to Crick and Watson — have eroded our belief in the divine.
But now, according to a new book, a "great reversal" is under way. Science, its authors argue over 580 pages, has come full circle and "forcefully put the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table".
In a striking challenge to the academic consensus, two French authors, Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies, argue that the latest scientific theories lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it. "Does God exist? Modern science shows he must, bestseller argues" October 5 2025
More on the book God, the Science, the Evidence— which has sold very well in Europe — later. For now just this: the authors are computer engineer Michel-Yves Bollore, a lifelong Catholic. and Olivier Bonnassies, a media entrepreneur who came to faith later in life. They emphasized to the Times that they are not so much interested in advancing religion as in dethroning materialism:
Instead, the authors have written a critique of materialism — the theory that all reality, including our origins, thoughts and consciousness, can be explained solely by physical matter and physical processes. The materialist narrative for the beginnings of the universe and life on earth is so full of holes, he and Bonnassies argue, that every modern scientific advance increases the strength of the case that a "creator" is the only rational explanation. "Bestseller argues"
We do live in interesting times.
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The advent of artificial intelligence has breathed new life into ancient philosophical questions concerning existence, knowledge of self, and how the self experiences and interacts with reality. The renewed importance of these philosophical questions has fostered the emergence of post-materialist and post-humanist concepts and theories concerning reality. Artificial intelligence may have unsettled some of the settled science rooted in materialism.
Artificial intelligence has opened a Pandora's box of questions concerning consciousness, self awareness, moral agency, and free will. Science and academia swept these questions under the rug by claiming these characteristics of identity emerged from an evolved brain. But those explanations of reality derived from humanism and materialism have suddenly become inadequate with the advent of artificial intelligence.
The questions of self that cannot be adequately answered by humanism and materialism has awakened reevaluation of the relationship between science and spirituality. And that is expanding beyond the realm of artificial intelligence. While there is some risk that metaphysics may again influence science to some extent, it is also true that allowing spirituality a renewed place in scientific pursuits could open the door to astounding progress in our understanding or reality beyond material limits.
It is not science to believe that which is not evidenced. It does not matter if a scientist is spiritual or not; unfounded belief is not science.
God of the gaps yet again.
Historically we see a lot of this in science. It's the new, up and coming people that often work hard to answer those questions without the bias of the older peers.
The advent of artificial intelligence represents a huge gap in traditional science and academia that cannot be swept under the rug of materialism.
Is mostly a marketing myth at this point.
Not a marketing myth in science and academia. Research has been active and ongoing.
Since the 1940's... we are nowhere near actual intelligence yet.
???? I doubt any of the computing machines of the 1940s would qualify. Maybe you're thinking of the Magic 8 Ball which was invented in 1944. Or maybe the Ouija board?
It was theoretical.
Now it is practical.
Quite practical!
But as evilone noted, we have a very long road ahead.
I'm not sure we know how long till some sort of artificial sentience appears. The pace of development doesn't seem to be following a linear progression.
R&D on AI may be following the same path as developing artificially produced fire. I find it difficult to believe that artificially produced fire was an incremental development.
We do not know and the pace is fast.
However, since we do not even know what consciousness is, it will be difficult for us to declare something AGI. The comparison point is with human beings so we need to understand our own intelligence first.
AI will continue to evolve so even if we cannot deem something AGI, it will certainly be awesome. Much the same way that computers (albeit mindless) are incredibly impressive in terms of computation speed.
Aren't the gaps already present in humanism and materialism? "Children thriving with missing brain structures" really is hard, verifiable evidence that represents a gap in material explanation.
Anecdotal evidence is still evidence even if it cannot be reproduced.
It is weak.
Evolved awareness.
Not really. Because there is no hard fast "We know how everything works now, this is it, definitive scientific fact" theory. The religious imagine that materialism is this singular thing they can grasp and say "Ha ha, I poke a hole through this hard fast rule about materialism, my God must exist! And it is male! And it's name is Zeus! Or Jesus! Or Vishnu! Or Allah! Or Guiseppe, the Spaghetti Monster!".
Here's a thought about the supposedly "unexplainable children thriving with missing brain parts", why did God supposedly perform some miracle for them, but then snuffed out the lives of dozens of other children with cancer or even preventable diseases like Measles. Were they not worthy? I get that nature is amazing, and the brain can compensate for a lot of damage especially while it's still growing. Now who is willing to cut that much out of an adult brain and hope that the person you're cutting out the brain of, just the same missing brain structures of those children, did a lot of praying. Because if the God theory holds true, it's not about age, it's about religious belief, right? So how many super faithful folk are going to sign up for the lobotomy to prove Dr. Michael Egnor right? Anyone? Anyone? Dr. Michael Egnor? How about you?
The idea that "Children thriving with missing brain structures" proves anything other than how amazing our brains are at adapting to survive, nothing more. If there were an active God at work in our everyday lives, we'd have quantifiable, measurable evidence of such interactions with our universe. There are none.
I'm not going so far as to rule out something like a God existing out there, but I'm very certain if there is one it's not watching us and interacting in our daily lives in any way shape or form. Prayer is just a form of mental masturbation. It feels nice, getting your emotional thought burdens out, to tell someone else how you really feel. It's why therapists make so much money; people love to get shit off their chests. Is any of their mental masturbation helping a sick child survive some brain disorder or cancer? Of course not, that would be silly.
Or it could be a non-material governing influence on reality that cannot be directly observed. Science cannot quantify, explain, or model the purpose of life. Understanding the process of living, in exquisite detail, will not describe the purpose of life in reality. That is a pre-existing gap in materialism.
Even a God of creation must conform to the rules of that creation. Otherwise the universe would not be logical or predictable. Wouldn't a God need a logical universe to have any chance of being omniscient?
Not all children with cancer will die of cancer. Not all children with measles will die of measles. Those are pre-existing gaps in materialism. Doesn't evolution work by exploiting those gaps in materialism?
But will adamantly excuse and defend the inadequacies of material science.
Consider that a response from an artificial intelligence model may only provide anecdotal evidence. The response has been recorded and can be observed by anyone reading the response. But the response may not be reproducible. Constructing another Large Language Model as a test may not provide the same response. Each LLM may be unique which means each unique response cannot be reproduced.
Material science would blur the issue of uniqueness by statistical analysis of responses from a number of LLMs to arrive at a consensus view about how LLMs respond. Using consensus to overcome the confounding issue of uniqueness creates a gap in our understanding of reality.
Material science has difficulty explaining unique outliers. After months of careful analysis an aircraft crash may be attributed to the nebulous cause of 'pilot error'. The crash only happened once and cannot be reproduced. Why did this spark die out while another spark grew into a forest fire? Why did a loose tire miss one person by inches and smash through a wall and kill someone else? Why did one person survive the Air India Flight 171 crash? Can science explain that without mumbling statistical incantations?
Prayer may be mental masturbation but it is beyond the capability of material science to explain prayer, the purpose of prayer, or why prayer has been part of the human condition throughout all of recorded history. There are gaps that material science simply cannot explain.
It doesn't have to. Each human gives purpose to their own lives. Beyond that it's all fantasy.
Neither will pretending that an invisible wizard in the sky exists and is somehow required in order for some to find purpose in their lives.
Okay, that's a first. I do believe that whatever we find someday that some define as God will conform to the rules of universe and not be outside them. That is not something that is a common belief among the religious, especially not the vast majority of Christians.
That's the law of averages as not all cancer or measles are fatal. Those are not "gaps" in materialism at all. Perhaps some might misunderstand what materialism is and assign it attributes, like a straw man, that they can then battle and refute, but that's just fucking moronic and a waste of time.
Nope. There simply is no reason to. Only the religious claim to have a complete understanding of the universe and its origins. Science makes no such claims. That's the problem that religion has; it makes the claim and can't fucking prove it. Science says "we're not sure, but we'll keep following the evidence" but that's not good enough for the tired little petulant pieces of shit that MUST be special, so they join a group of other delusional bigots who claim they're the most special and they know the truth and it's their God that made everything so you better do what they want. What a fucking joke.
Yes. Physics can perfectly explain the facts of an accident if given enough information. The only one mumbling incantations are the dumb shits who believe every unknown should be filled in with "My God did it, and he loves me! Aren't I special?!?". What a bunch of fucking losers who can't accept that some shit happens because of amazing circumstance, and the universe doesn't give a fuck who's good or bad, it will snuff the life out of the next Mother Terresa if she was sitting in the wrong seat on that plane that day. Why should anyone introduce the most complex crazy unscientific integer of "God" into ANY fucking equation and expect to get anything other than PURE FICTION as a result?
There is no mystery, people do it because it feels good. It feels good to "throw your burdens" on some imaginary friend you can talk to that won't ever judge you because they don't exist, so it's safe which is why people do it.
Not really. There are gaps that science hasn't explained yet, but that doesn't mean we'll never find the answer. Accepting that we don't know everything yet is a much more logical position to take than to be some haughty religious bigot so sure of themselves and their faith that they believe they have the right to shit all over everyone else on the planet because their God thinks they're so fucking special.
Religion: Thinks it has all the answers but can't prove a fucking thing.
Science: Openly admits it doesn't have all the answers but is actively searching and continuing to ask questions, test and observe our universe while continually updating what we know and can prove.
I'll take science over religion every time.
A major motivator for institutional science was to better understand the universe (governed by immutable laws) to obtain a better understanding of the God of creation. Many Catholic monks and priests pursued scientific inquiry and experimentation.
The God of Judaism is a god of laws. The Jewish faith is based upon God following His own covenants consistent with that law. Likewise, Christian theology is also based upon God consistency following His own covenants in a similar manner. Do not confuse the inclusion of pagan cultural traditions in Christian rituals and practices with formal Christian theology.
The need for correlative statistics recognizes there are gaps in the ability of science to explain all aspects of material reality. As an example, anthropology uses observation, correlation, and statistics to study and categorized human behaviors and subjective states (love, fear, purpose). The need for correlative statistical categorization indicates there are gaps in the ability to explain all of reality under the constraint of deterministic materialism.
Science attempts to utilize proxies (brain activity, chemical changes) to explain these intangible behaviors and subjective states. Science may even be able to induce these subjective states artificially. But that does not explain or model the cause of the in situ subjective state based upon deterministic materialism. The exquisite complexity introduced by science actually obscures that gaps are present in ability to explain all of reality under the rigid constraints of deterministic materialism.
The science of deterministic materialism cannot overcome the injection of random chance (chaos) into the causal chain. First of all the events are not reproducible so statistics cannot gloss over random chance. An accident such as Air India Flight 171 where only one person survived is a single event, very chaotic, and cannot be reproduced because random chance has been introduced.
A statement that "science can explain everything with deterministic materialism" is no less a statement of belief and faith than "God moves in mysterious ways". The arguments that physics can explain the facts avoids and ignores the theological argument that God created the logical universe and physics is a result. Pointing to all those scientific facts doesn't even address the "God did it" argument. If a God created a logical universe that consistently follows the laws of deterministic materialism then "God did it" is always a plausible explanation.
The theological argument would be that scientific facts do not refute God but, rather, validates God's creation. Church theology may oppose science as a threat to institutional authority but seems a rather short sighted disregard for God's creation.
How is science relying on the fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force) as first cause to explain deterministic material reality any different than theology relying on a God force as first cause to explain all of reality (material and immaterial)?
How is belief and faith that scientists have correctly interpreted reality any different than belief and faith that theologians have correctly interpreted reality? Many claim that science corrects itself while religion doesn't. But that is not the case. Theologians adjust and correct their interpretation of reality, too.
It is true that the scientific literature updates with each new discovery and reinterpretation of reality. It's also true that Biblical scripture doesn't change. But the interpretation of scripture is not static and unchanging. Theological views of scripture have often been challenged and interpretations have been revised. Consider that the consistently logical universe serves the same function for science that the Bible serves for theology. Science is based upon the universe providing answers about first cause. Theology is based upon the Bible providing answers about first cause. Yes, there are obvious difference but there are also a number of less obvious similarities.
Religions answer many questions about immaterial reality. Science is self-limited to material reality and attempts to challenge religion based on interpretation of material reality. But religion more often address immaterial reality than material reality. While there have been concerted attempts to question the validity of immaterial reality, those attempts have not refuted the existence of immaterial reality.
I prefer trying to understand all of reality rather than limiting myself to only the material aspect of reality.
In both (in all) cases there must be something rather than nothing. That something is some substance (for lack of a word) ... be it some exotic form of energy or whatever. That substance is necessarily eternal and necessarily undergoes change.
A god is an entity of unfathomable complexity and power. Based on the fact that complexity is always reducible, how does one hold that it is more likely that the origin of everything is a complex sentient entity rather than an extremely primitive substance?
If there is a creator, it is more likely that the creator is itself an emergent property of the aforementioned substance than it having aseity.
Yet everything emerges from non-existence. Even reordering matter to create something begins with non-existence. The process of creation transforms non-existence into existence.
But a God represents a state of perfect order. Order is not reducible. Creation begins the process of disorder as evidenced by entropy. Increasing entropy (which is observed in the universe) is a measure of order moving to disorder. Increasing disorder naturally increases complexity.
No, that is philosophically and scientifically unsound.
ChatGPT has a nice explanation:
If that is your concept of God then how do you find complexity and sentience in this God?
So in what way does this, in your mind, lead to a sentient creator entity as the uncaused cause?
I did not say everything emerges from nothing. What I said is everything emerges from non-existence. If you plan to prepare a meatloaf, the meatloaf does not yet exist. Assembling ingredients and cooking to create the meatloaf means that act of creation transformed a planned non-existent meatloaf into existence. The meatloaf did not come from nothing but it did emerge from non-existence.
I think you're confusing complexity of what has been created with the well ordered rules of creation.
If God is perfect order, then His sentience and complexity aren't about an intricate structure with a lot of parts (which is the definition of material complexity). Perfect order is about following a logical, irreducible, coherent set of rules (at the least). The complexity is less important than logical coherence.
The immaterial qualities you mention—consciousness, sentience, purpose, free will—aren't too complex to understand even if they are difficult to explain. They only appear complex when we try to model them with material science, because that science is based on observing the proxies of disorder in the universe, not its ordered source.
Simply stated it is logical coherent order that allows creation by God or man. But immaterial logical order cannot overcome entropy. It's the resulting disorder, that material science attempts to use as a proxy, that generates the material complexity science struggles to reduce.
My answer is to use an analogy. The Mona Lisa, created by Leonardo da Vinci, has degraded over time (entropy has introduced disorder). Attempting to study the Mona Lisa in its disordered state to better understand da Vinci is extremely difficult. Yet the immaterial qualities that da Vinci imparted to the painting are still evident by simple observation. We may not fully understand how da Vinci created the Mona Lisa but we can still draw conclusions about da Vinci's purpose and intent.
Then your claim is meaningless. It simply states that everything is reducible to lower-level components. While that cannot be true ad infinitum, it certainly is true in every case we know about (currently).
You’ve described assembling parts. That is not the same as ‘emerging from non-existence’. It is simply creating new forms from that which already exists.
So be clear. What point are you trying to make by stating something so obvious?
You are simply making a claim. You claim that perfect order means that sentience and complexity are not reducible. You cannot just assert without backing it up. Show why divine complexity is irreducible.
This is incoherent. So as a test to see if you have any real thought here, is the formation of galaxies a logical coherent order imposed by God (in your mind)?
You think this is an analogy for how "increasing disorder naturally increases complexity" leads to a sentient creator entity as the uncaused cause?
You attempted to make the false claim that I had stated existence emerges from nothing. What I said is existence emerges from non-existence. The existence of the lower lower-level components does not impart existence onto assembled order. The assembling creates an additional level of existence that is greater than the sum of the components.
The point is existence is not static. Existence is a dynamic state of shifting forms and levels of coherent order. If existence was static then there would be no entropy in the universe.
I am contending that sentience is not materially reducible. Sentience is an immaterial quality that cannot be modelled by material determinism. Sentience exists, can be directly observed, but cannot be reduced to material form.
Formation of galaxies is a process of creation that governed by the coherent logical order of the universe. The coherent logical order of the universe means that galaxies can form without need for intervention.
No, that is incorrect. My analogy was intended to show that gaps exist in deterministic materialism that is beyond the capabilities of science. The topic of discussion was about scientists either adopting or feeling free to discuss spirituality as a tool to understand all of reality (beyond material reality). The counter to that topic was the claims this is "arguing in the gaps". My arguments show there really are gaps. My contention is that science is incapable of refuting a sentient creator entity because immaterial aspects of reality do exist and cannot be reduced to material explanations.
Yeah, I know; you should have seen that I got your intended meaning from my last post. So that basically states that we build things from parts. A pointless observation that attempts to subtly change the meaning of the notion of "coming into existence". It is sophistry. It is dishonest.
No, you are trying to shift the meaning of existence by equating it with assembly.
Which is what I noted ... you are merely making a claim with no supporting justification other than you say so.
I think pretty much everyone knows that science does not explain everything. You claim that it can never do so. Another claim without support justification.
Anyone can make claims; what matters is one's ability to justify those claims.
How do you define emerging into existence? What is the honest explanation? Instead of making accusations perhaps you should provide a better logical argument that explains emergence into existence. Or refute the contention that what exists emerges from non-existence.
Your objection can be tested (and refuted) with the existence of life. Life has a beginning, life has not always existed, life emerged into existence. Arguing about how life emerged into existence doesn't alter the simple fact that life did, indeed, emerge from non-existence into existence.
The same test (and refutation) can performed using an immaterial element of reality such as knowledge. Knowledge has not always existed. Knowledge emerges into existence.
Emergence is the formation of something from constituent parts. The key is that there is a substrate of existence. There is something there.
Already have. You are intentionally trying to superimpose existence onto a very basic concept of composition. You use 'come into existence' to represent a whole forming from parts. It is unusual language, but there is nothing wrong with saying that at the end of an assembly line, a car 'comes into existence', but in the context where we are discussing existence itself, that use of language is sophistry.
Bottom line, everything in reality is (as far as we can tell) reducible.
My objection is your sophistry. Continuing with the sophistry accomplishes nothing.
Again, you intentionally use the phrase "into existence" with the meaning of composition in a topic of existence itself. Knowledge is acquired, and the acquisition can be traced back to the physical reality upon which it is based.
Unless you want to honestly argue that something can emerge from nothing, this little game you are playing is pointless.
I doubt that anyone would object to the notion that new things are created / arise from parts. Given that is extremely obvious, the only point of your choice of language is to try to expand the meaning of the phrase "come into existence" to then make some point.
Just make the point.
But the substrate of existence is reducible to first emergence. That establishes an argument that existence emerged from first cause. That may work for deterministic material reality but doesn't work with immaterial elements of reality. How is knowledge reducible?
My statement that everything that exists emerged from non-existence is not sophistry. Would you prefer a more classical descript of "coming into being"? There isn't anything deceptive or misleading about my statement. And I have supported the veracity of the statement with several examples from reality.
But the existence of the components do not impart existence onto whatever comes into being. It the process of assembly (or creation) that brings something into existence. That holds for both material and immaterial elements of reality. The formation of galaxies is the process that brings galaxies into being. That's a natural function of the logical universe that can be modeled as a chain of causality.
But I'm not arguing that something emerges from nothing. I'm also not arguing that everything is reducible to first cause. Perhaps it's an oversimplified conclusion but it is the process of creation that brings elements of reality into being. Things emerge into existence from creation. The corollary would be that the process of destruction removes things from existence.
It is the process of assembly or creation that imparts existence onto the new form. In many cases the process of material creation can be modeled as a chain of causality. But the possible presence of random chaos in the chain of causality represents a gap that may not be reducible by science.
The substrate of existence IS the first cause.
Knowledge is recorded information. The information has components AND is the result of a process. The process has steps.
Just make your point. This is boring, and I am not going to keep responding to you repeating yourself.
Existence is a state of being. How can a state of being emerge from being? What that suggests is there cannot be a state of non-existence or non-being. That would negate the effects of entropy and the passage of time. That would not allow for random chaos in reality.
The postulate that existence emerges from a substrate of existence suggests that the substrate of existence possesses the material and immaterial elements of all reality. How can consciousness emerge from a substrate of consciousness? How can sentience emerge from a substrate of sentience? Wouldn't that suggest that the fabric of reality was a conscious, sentient entity? Wouldn't that suggest reality is actually better explained and modeled by metaphysics rather than physics?
A substrate of existence would represent a potential for coming into being. But that potential means that whatever will emerge does not yet exist. Potential for existence is still a state of non-existence. Logically, existence would emerge from a substrate of non-existence. The passage of time marks the change from non-existence to existence to non-existence which indicates that existence emerges from a substrate of non-existence.
Your postulate that existence emerges from a substrate of existence is circular logic. As I have shown, the passage of time marks changes from non-existence to existence to non-existence (consistent with entropy). So logically, existence would emerge from a substrate of non-existence and dissipate or return to a substrate of non-existence. The substrate of non-existence would be present before and after existence.
But that substrate of non-existence would be something other than absolute nothing. Existence emerging from a substrate of non-existence is not the same thing as emerging from nothingness. A substrate of non-existence would possess the quality of potential being or potential existence. A process of creation would be necessary to transform that potential into reality.
That is NOT what I have described. You are using existence as I use the term and simultaneously imposing your existence=composition sophistry.
I have no more patience for your continued word game.
I am not sure you have described anything. You have stated "In both (in all) cases there must be something rather than nothing" to which I agree. You have claimed the substrate of existence "is some substance (for lack of a word) ... be it some exotic form of energy or whatever". That does not account for both material and immaterial elements in reality but is an acceptable argument that I have not challenged. You have made some statements concerning the complexity of a God or sentient creator but my contentions do not rely on a God although my contentions do not preclude a God.
You have stated that the substance of existence is first cause. My rebuttal was that things emerge from non-existence, exist for a time, and dissipate or return to non-existence. How do you defend a claim that things emerge from existence, exist, and dissipate or return to existence? The only way to justify what you have described is that existence == form. Things emerging from an amorphous form to ordered form and dissipating or retuning to amorphous form would be consistent with your statement. Is this what you are contending?
That does not in any way rebut the notion of a substrate that has always existed. You yet again use the word existence but with a meaning of 'has been composed'. Your quoted words read as though you have made an argument that something can come from nothing.
You are wasting my time. Done.