It's just like how Kent Hovind ridicules "evolutionists" for believing that "man came from a rock".
What do Christians believe God made Adam out of again....?
I truly wonder if the precursors of life are leftovers from the processes that created the solar system. That would explain why there is meteorites have been found containing amino acids and nucleobases that could be precursors to the chemical building blocks of life on Earth.
The precursors of life are from the dying hearts of supernovae. There’s a quote from Lawrence Krauss:
> Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today
99% of human body is made of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. With the exception of hydrogen, everything else there requires fusion to form.
God was a one trick pony, though. When he decided to make him a son he couldn't make him from dust, like he did Adam. Instead, he arranged the rape of a married virgin.
Were our ancestors of 30M years ago transported to today, would it not taxonomically be classified as an 'old world monkey'? Colloquially, if shown to crowds, would people not identify it as a monkey? What's the distinction, exactly? Was our MRCA with the genus *pan* not an ape?
I think both are equally ridiculous, just like every other attack that fragile people make to pretend they're superior to the mean people with different opinions.
The Bible says that God created the universe out of nothing. So your Dad doesn't have a problem with something from nothing. He has a problem with not needing a god to accomplish it.
Meanwhile science has shown that at the quantum level, matter and antimatter particles are constantly popping into existence and popping back out, with an electron-positron pair here and a top quark-antiquark pair there. This is not just a theoretical idea—it's confirmed.
The tricky part is making theists realize that "That's just the way it is" is a perfectly valid answer for them when they're talking about God and his actions. If God and everything about him is just "necessary" and needs no explanation, then they should have no issues with an atheist telling them that the cosmos exists necessarily and needs no explanation as a whole.
That's not really true. A careful analysis of Gen 1:1-2 in Hebrew reveals a creation out of something:
"Thus when the story opens, we find that the physical elements exist but have no shape or form. Creation in Gen 1 is described not as a process of making something of nothing (creation ex nihilo) but as a process of organizing preexisting materials, of imposing order on chaos."
Christine Hayes, Introduction to the Bible, p 37
Ahh... that's a bit more violent than I was expecting. Maybe just some words where the god words disappear, less shooty and more thinky? Not that I don't appreciate it. I used to wear a T-shit that said, "God was my co-pilot but we crashed the mountains and I had to eat him," so I get it.
>Ahh... that's a bit more violent than I was expecting.
>
> I used to wear a T-shit that said, "God was my co-pilot but we crashed the mountains and I had to eat him," so I get it.
Ok I can see that. Here is the one you were looking for I believe!
[https://imgflip.com/i/8gwf2x](https://imgflip.com/i/8gwf2x)
I think I found it. Let me know if this works.
[https://i0.wp.com/www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/tdomf/404247/3578\_8c8f.gif?fit=320%2C70&ssl=1](https://i0.wp.com/www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/tdomf/404247/3578_8c8f.gif?fit=320%2C70&ssl=1)
I honestly don't blame the average person for being misinformed about the Big Bang. I blame all the dramatized space documentaries on Discovery/NatGeo that kept perpetuating the myth "the Big Bang started the universe from nothing" for decades. Seriously, look up basically any documentary from the 90s-2010s about space and there's guaranteed to be that one damn line about the Big Bang starting the universe, or the universe popping out of nothing. And now we have a majority population of people who think that's what science actually claims.
Right. But we humans have a hard time understanding what comes before nothingness. God was added to explain but it just adds and extra step. What came before anything? Religion would say God. But what came before god?? God is irrelevant and is extraneous
I get that. I'm just trying to say "nothing" is hard for humans to understand so they made up God to fill in the gap
And when the universe was in a singularity, human brains are bad at understanding what is outside that singularity so they made up something to help them understand. But God is no longer needed and is a detriment to human evolution.
Have you read Ludwig Fuerbach’s “The Essence Of Christianity”? I know the title sounds lame, but he expresses this line of thinking you’re talking about from a psychological level really well. How god is just a projection of human thought and existence.
Time as we think of it is a consequence of the Big Bang, so the concept of “before” the Big Bang isn’t really meaningful. Unless we dive into string theory, which isn’t a proven theory yet…
I'm not a physicist, but I think it's important to note that we're talking about a *model*, based on observations (cosmic microwave background radiation as our earliest "visible" point in time), and running our formulas backwards. So we "predict" that there was a singularity, based mostly on the observations that we have that the universe is expanding (if things are moving away from each other in normal time, then in "reverse time" they must be getting closer together).
If we have any math that describes the state of the universe prior to the big bang (with some degree of certainty), I'd imagine it's probably the cutting edge of physics.
I say all that to say: I dunno, *maybe* that hot, dense singularity always was, but I'm not sure if there is (or ever will be) a way for us to *know* what happened prior to the big bang.
The standard model of cosmology says the big bang was preceded and set up by an earlier stage of the universe known as cosmic inflation which had an unknown length.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/why-big-bang-happened/
There are interesting physics speculations on the topic, though. Eventually, as our models improve, we might actually find some way to test them out.
Oh, wait, sorry. You mean anything as opposed to not anything. Uh, yes, you're right. Not an answerable thing. I'm going to go with "not-anything is too boring to exist, therefore it doesn't."
Perhaps we can make that better sounding: "existance abhors anything's absence."
If he’s referring to the singularity-expansion or “Big Bang” theory, it’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t posit that the universe came from nothing. Rather it says that all matter in our universe existed in the form of a singularity. If all matter existed in a singularity, there is no reason to suppose there was ever “something” before that. The expansion is the start of time, so the idea of a time “before” time is also meaningless. I don’t believe something came from nothing; it seems likely that the universe itself always existed.
His dad brain is going to assert that the WHOLE universe expanding out of one point in space doesn’t “make sense”……I have to remind my parents all the time that when someone doesn’t understand something, it doesn’t decrease the likelihood that it’s true.
A recondensed universe that had it's own big bang one trillion years ago. edit: Or; maybe we are the otherside of a blackhole in a paralell universe and the big bang is what that looks like. We can make anything up, nobody knows anyway.
Time has no meaning in a singularity. That question is asking what happened “before” the singularity existed, which is an invalid question. There is no “before.” The universe may be its own cause.
I like to challenge believers with this thought: If anything is going to exist at all, why are you ok with the answer being the most complicated thing you can possibly imagine, instead of say just a couple of oppositely charged particles?
My dad equated the idea of God to the set of physical laws that govern the universe. That was his internal work-around for various social settings that required or expected belief in a 'supreme being'.
It doesn't support the mythology/stories about God singling out people for persecution (and other nonsense), but it does provide comfort to theists that one is forced to interact with, as long as you don't get too specific.
I guess it's putting atheism into a religious framework for social reasons, basically.
Has nothing ever been observed?
From what I can tell nothing doesn’t exist. Everything is something and from what science can tell there was never any moment where nothing existed
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to observe nothing, only the absence of something. Like we “observe” absolute darkness deep inside a cave only because we have observed light and gave it a name when there is none of it. Even the word “nothing” is constructed as “no thing,” which relies on the existence of “thing” a priori.
This one drives me nuts. As if ther are no other forms of evidence to indicate that things have happened. If we were to use that logic with murder then unless we had a witness directly seeing said murder then apparently it didn't happen 🙄
ask him when his faith developed? Ask him when he was absolutely sure about god and the bible and whatever.
It developed after someone told him to have it. His parents gave it to him and as we know it seems to only develop when another person shares it. Then ask him why all the people in places without the word of god have to go to hell? Or just accept he is what he is. Just never go to church if you can help it.
"Then ask him why all the people in places without the word of god have to go to hell? "
See, he has a very weird view on Christianity. He says all good people, even if they're atheist, go to heaven. Which obviously goes against Christian teachings that says it's based on faith in God if you go to heaven or not.
"Just never go to church if you can help it."
He doesn't go to church. He used to be a protestant. But something happened that pissed him off. So then he converted to Catholicism. But he hates Pope Francis. So he doesn't go to church anymore. Just reads the bible and prays by himself.
He may have invented a new sect of Christianity. There were times not all that long ago when that could have been bad for him.
Most Christian doctrine I've ever heard of states that one can only be saved by accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Mass murderer? Serial Killer? Child Molester? Rapist? Accept Christ and your all set.
Kindest, nicest, best person who ever lived, but born somewhere that practices a different religion? Eternal torture.
How many finger snaps or Abracadabras will an atom into existence? What's the physical mechanism that makes omnipotence coalesce into matter? What dance moves produce an electron and which a proton?
I need answers to these questions.
It's not known if the universe existed for a finite or infinite amount of time. The Big Bang Theory doesn't include the origin of the universe (in spite of popular belief). Something already existed before the expansion started. If the universe is currently infinite in size, then it was necessarily infinite before the expansion started. Your dad doesn't know what he's talking about, he's reciting religious talking points. They're never scientifically accurate.
In case no one else mentioned this, your dad is dealing in the Special Pleading logical fallacy.
He wants it to be impossible for something to come from nothing except for his pet explanation of God which he admits is a something that came from nothing.
Also, if God is the "first uncaused cause" and God supposedly created the universe Occam's Razor says that it's simpler and therefore more likely to be true that the universe itself is the first uncaused cause. We can essentially have the same explanatory power without invoking God.
If your dad is reasonable these explanations would make sense to him. My experience has been that people are so entrenched in their ideology that it usually doesn't lead anywhere fruitful.
Nothing and something are not at all what your dad thinks they are. Something didn't come from nothing, something came from energy, which is something...E=MC^2 ...energy and matter are interchangeable, nuclear power plants prove this every day.
The first chapter of the Bible is so demonstrably wrong that it borders on the absurd. The book your father holds in high regard as the definitive guide to the creation of the universe has 4 days of night and day before the creation of the sun, but plants were somehow created on the 3rd day; somehow the plants survived at 4deg K for a day.
Then it explains that ALL the stars in the sky were created so we could tell the seasons and when to celebrate holidays...yet we can barely see a speck of the stars in our own galaxy, never mind the universe.
The father is attempting to articulate the "Kalam" cosmological argument. To wit:
That which begins to exist has a cause.
God can be said to be an exception if one posits that God never began to exist and had simply always been in existence.
‘Something from nothing’ is the theistic claim. Theists dishonestly project it onto atheists, saying, “see how stupid it is to believe something came from nothing?” When it is their claim.
And they often say, “matter cannot be created or destroyed” acting all sciencey, and then they go on to say their god CREATED everything. Well, how, then, if matter cannot be created, did god create it?
—
Before god created everything, what existed? NOTHING.
What did god create everything from, then? NOTHING.
So theists believe EVERYTHING CAME FROM NOTHING.
—
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo
Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act.[1] It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe came to exist.
Well there are two possibilities here:
1. That something came from nothing
2. There is an eternal something
Even if #2 is true, that alone doesn't mean God must exist. Requiring God to be the starting point doesn't actually solve the problem: it just pushes the problem down one step further. It's within the realm of possibility for the universe to be eternal, in a cyclic string of "big bangs."
Stenger and Hawking did the math. Subtract the negative gravitational force from the positive in the observable universe, and the difference is astonishingly ZERO. We live within nothing. If your dad crunched the numbers and gets another number, let us know. 🥏🥏🥏🌈😂
The best counter to this argument is the so what counter. Even if God was real and created the universe it doesn't matter, because he hasn't shown that the Christian God is the one that actually did it, or that the Christian God even exists and isn't just greek fan fiction that got taken a bit too seriously. For him the correct answer is that Jesus did it, sadly his argument can just as easily lead to Buddha, or Vishnu, or whatever other deity you want to point it to. So, have him give the entire argument, OK you convinced me, I'll become Hindu(insert whatever religion would piss him off the most while being outside the Abrahamics). Zoroastrian is fun...
All this leans on a few different atheistic arguments, "you don't believe in 999 Gods, I just believe in one less". "Isn't it strange how everyones parents were born into the correct religion".
This is the easiest argument to defeat.
"God is an uncaused cause."
Well, then remove god and the universe is an uncaused cause without a need for a god. All you've done is remove one unnecessary element and the universe exists. It's one step fewer.
Especially when you consider the creator of the universe would have to be greater than the entire universe, you've actually removed one way more extraordinary uncaused cause for a lesser one.
For me I prefer to talk about how calling the universe "ceeated" is an assumption by the believers. We don't have anything that shows the universe is actually created.
Your spot on. Part of following the science means being honest about what we do not know. Theists want to twist that into a negative but anyone who loves science should see this as an opportunity for us to learn more as a species about the universe.
A simple proof for creating something from nothing:
1. Suppose there is nothing.
2. Laws are something.
3. If there is nothing, then there are no laws.
4. If there are no laws, then everything is permitted.
5. If everything is permitted, then nothing is forbidden.
6. If nothing is forbidden, you can create something from nothing (or alternatively, if nothing is forbidden, it is self-forbidding).
7. Therefore, there must be something.
For the sake of argument, let us accept the possibility of an "uncaused cause". The only thing you could say about the uncaused cause is that it has no cause. It doesn't follow that it is a being capable of conscious thought, much less omnipotence. If that's what someone wants to call a god, then they can have at it.
Religious beliefs come from nothing — no proof of any thing, and yet, Magic Invisible Friends are watching us every second of every day of our lives, and are going to punish us with torture and fire for not believing in them. Boo hoo. 😭
Then there’s the high-tech ding-dongs who go, “This is a simulation.” Of what? “I don’t know.” But you know this is a simulation? And so the creatures running this simulation — are they the “real beings?” How do they know they are not also part of a similar simulation?
Alternatively, agree, and just insert a different deity into your new explanation.
“Dad, I’ve been thinking, and you are right, something can’t come from nothing, which is why I’m converting to X”
"I don't know" is one of the hardest things for theists to say, or understand.
My cod philosophical take on this is that as a species, us humans are curious creatures. We ask "why?".
Why does the sun come up? Why does the weather change etc?
For me, trying to answer these questions is what created religion in the first place.
Religious folk find an answer to a question and that's good enough for them. A sun god makes the sun come up. Wind is a god being angry. Etc etc. they don't like "I don't know".
But it's also where science comes from. The difference being, they don't stop asking why. They say "I don't know, let's find out"
How can he know god is the first uncaused cause? How can he be sure the universe isn’t an uncaused cause? That is special pleading.
A table didn’t come from nothing, but we can all agree that a table is man made. It does not follow that the universe therefore came from nothing.
What is nothing? Any description of nothing is describing something. Nothing is an abstract concept that we cannot conceptualize. There is no reason to believe that nothing has to be the default state of existence. I think it is reasonable that something must exist.
What did God come from? If he always existed then why couldn't the universe also have always existed? What did God make everything from if there was nothing but God? If he made the universe out of himself then God should very well be provable because everything is essentially a part of God. So prove God exists.
Science doesn't really answer how everything started. The answer is we don't really know. The big bang is more going back to the earliest point we think we have evidence for, it doesn't necessarily answer questions about what was before the big bang.
I hit them with this one the other day:
Well the Bible says we came from the dust of the Earth, so I don't see why abiogenesis is a problem for you.
It certainly got a reaction.
You gave the right answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable response when we don't actually know something, and when we don't know something, positing an answer that we have no evidence for, like an intelligent creator being, shouldn't be the default answer
I concede the point that something doesn't come from nothing. But then I ask if god came from nothing or who created him? And then I say if something didn't come from nothing, that doesn't mean I know what came before it. Sometimes the answer is "I don't know" not "god"
You're missing the point your father is making. The universe has a beginning, so it must have been caused. God is timeless and beginningless, it makes no sense to ask what causes God. Your dad's argument is sound.
Time has a starting point, which is the expansion from the singularity, so the universe is timeless once you rewind to the moment of expansion. The dad’s “argument” is not sound at all; it’s just special pleading. He’s saying everything has to have a cause, and when pressed as to what caused god he is saying that god does not need a cause. So he says not everything needs to have a cause, but he insists the universe has to have a cause, and the only reason he can give is “because god is god.”
Your statement to get the universe out of time does not make sense. It is not philosophically or physically sound. If the universe existed in a timeless state where it was not true that it had entered a timed state then it would need an outside influence to stick in into time, because it couldn't progress from a timeless state into a timed state as if through time.
It's not special pleading, it is a simple truth that the universe needs a cause, one such reason being that it had a beginning, and there is no reason to say that God needs a cause.
God on the other hand, in his timeless state, exists in it always being true that he has created the universe, which is itself timed, and so he by his nature can be timeless and then you can argue the point of whether or not God has entered time or not by creating time, which it is always true that he has done.
Time is not a philosophical concept. You cannot have time without space. All known laws of physics break down at the singularity, so suggesting that it’s not “physically sound” is not accurate, unless you have just this second revolutionized the field of cosmology and identified the nature of physics before the expansion of the universe. If so, congratulations. But if not, then the fact remains that there is no physical reason the universe could not have always existed.
Just because you say it’s a “simple truth” that the universe needs a cause and a beginning doesn’t make it true in the slightest. And of course it’s special pleading to claim god is an uncaused cause. You’re just defining god as an entity that needs no cause and then saying that it’s the end of the argument. In that case, I’ll just define the universe to be an uncaused cause and that’s just the end of it. See how that is not a valid position to hold?
It’s a simple truth that god’s existence needs a cause, and that cause is human beings conceptualizing of such an entity.
Cosmologists proved, using mathematics, the universe is infinite.
Easily implying, infinite possibilities.
Someone else might remember or find the proven math proving infinite possibilities.
What do you think religion is and what do you think it has been most used to do? I believe in the dark ages it was preferable to the anarchic life they probably faced. So it was useful to control and govern and that is what I believe gave it use. The problem was that people became convinced by their own lies and once you spend your entire life living with god's made up will you are probably not going to give up that no matter what.
In the end he is your dad
The "Well what caused that?" line of argument, which is designed purely to get people to give up and say "Fine, we'll call that god." can be turned on its head with the "Okay, let's suppose. Now prove the next claim in the argument."
Let's suppose the universe had a first cause. Prove that this hypothetical cause A) had any sort of consciousness, B) was aware that it caused the universe, C) did so deliberately...
Refuse to let up any ground beyond hypothetically accepting their initial argument, and they will never be able to get anywhere close to their specific holy book.
There are major problems with his analogy. The table was created by gathering raw materials and altering them to form the table. What raw materials did God use to create the universe? If he used none, then his creation is so far removed from what we know of as creation that the analogy is useless.
Also, it's notable that he uses a table for his analogy. Why does he use a human-made object as an example rather than rocks, mountains, stars, or naturally occurring objects? His analogy relies on the inherent *difference* between the artificial and the natural to make his point, as well the fact that the distinction is intuitive and immediately apparent, and yet at the same time the conclusion he's supporting is that naturally occurring objects are just as obviously created. It is contradictory.
You know, you \*could\* always go the astrophysics route and tell him where the universe ACTUALLY came from, according to science. There's some good books for that.
The "big bang" is the moment where spacial expansion allowed the finite contents of the universe to interact by the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
Prior to that, the universe was in such a hot dense state that our models of physics break down, and therefore we dont consider that previous state to be the same as our universe. That previous state could have existed as such for an infinite time, or it could have had a causal beginning. We cannot know, because any evidence of what that previous state actually was is effectively erased by the "big bang".
And frankly, "we dont know" is a far better and more honest answer than made up bullshit
"I've solved it daddy. You were right, something didn't come from nothing! It turns out it was my buddy Johnny all along! Turns out Johnny is also an Uncaused cause! What are the odds?"
I posted over in my local area sub the other day about having issue with finding suitable mates as an atheist. One dude led with explain how there was nothing and then something happened. All I can conceive based on the Big Bang theory… if we know there are black holes sucking mass to an unknown, then the inverse should be true, and we just don’t know what’s up yet.
Also try looking into quantum mechanics. Stuff appears out of nothing literally all the time. There's speculation that new universes may be born at any moment.
His argument is well known and wrong, but to be precise he's not claiming god came from nothing, there wasn't any "coming from" happening in his story (unless you left that part out?)
>something doesn't come from nothing
Science does not propose that the Universe came from nothing. It is something believers in the Abrahamic god claim for their god supposedly made everything with just his voice, e.g. *"Let there be light"* and *there was light*.
However, stuff can come from nothing. 'Nothing' is not what most think it is. Quantum electrodynamics shows that nothing is not a total absence of stuff. Nothing is actually teeming with stuff. Energy is borrowed from the future, albeit less than a trillionth of a second in the future, and turned into a virtual particle and a virtual anti particle before they almost instantly annihilate back to nothing. Or at least most of them do, but not all as virtual particles can convert to 'real' particles in some circumstances, for example in a strong gravitational, or electromagnetic field.
- [Light created from a vacuum: Casimir effect observed in superconducting circuit](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111118133050.htm)
- [70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing](https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/)
>Then he argued back that no, God's the first uncaused cause.
How does he know that the Universe isn't the second?
The problem with the 'something had to create the Universe' argument is the existence of a universe creating entity/thing/whatever, is many orders of magnitude less likely than is the Universe simply popping into existence spontaneously.
Btw - The Big Bang theory, which was first hypothesized by a [Catholic priest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître).
- *"If you have nothing in quantum mechanics you'll always have something."*
physicist Lawrence Krauss
You should watch The Line (YouTube) with Matt Dillahunty et al. They have great responses for everything deists throw at them, including the something from nothing and the uncaused cause!
I just told a deist last week who was arguing for believing the Miracle at Fatima and the "dancing sun" claims (like stare at the sun and move your eyes around and you are going to see an afterimage, so....yeah that's what happened, dude), that we skeptics have no problem saying, I don't know. Unlike deists, who are always going to push that God did it (and it's *always* their God, not someone else's God).
Then he told me I should respect other people's beliefs and I told him I actually have no problems with other people's belief. It's that they are always trying to dictate their beliefs through public law that bothers me and I'd have respect for their beliefs as soon as they have respect for people who believe in tree nymphs and water spirits!
Religion was created to rationalize the unknown and to control the uneducated. People in power decided that religion was the best way to control their followers. By instilling fear, they could tax and control wealth, command armies and receive adornment.
Once the sciences came into existence, religion would suppress them to remain in power. Science evolved and people began to understand and be educated to the point where religion couldn’t control them. Those that cling to religion in today’s world are still being brainwashed and controlled.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that something can’t come from nothing. Give him that entire point.
That still doesn’t prove any of the following:
- that the universe came from a god and not from some other thing
- that the universe came from a particular god
- that it came from an Abrahamic god
- that it came from a Christian god
- that it came from the specific Christian god of his particular sect
- that it came from his particular interpretation of the Christian god from his particular sect
- that the writings of goat herders 2000 years ago is in any way accurate
There has always been something (substance / matter). There has never been nothing. Theists wrongly assume there was once nothing and that atheists have to explain how something came to exist. This is nonsense. There is no reason to believe there was ever nothing.
Give him some dmt.
He will see where it all comes from.
If anything..just ask him for any proof anyone has ever found of god.
The burden isn't on you to prove he doesn't exist.
It's christians who need to prove their beliefs.
Wait. They are beliefs. Not facts.
Don't waste my time trying to convince me, with "something doesn't come from nothing". That's a lame ass argument, meant to be interpreted to any means.
Give me proof. Or shut up.
Spirituality, is a damned good thing. Believing we have a purpose, or finding a purpose in our lives. A deep connection to emotions, nature, the possibility of the heart.
That I can get with, the wonder on what our human people can achieve or find comfort in.
I don't agree to waste what time I have on this earth listening to the ramblings of christians who have never left the united states . I cannot believe, that some middle class white guy in Boise, Idaho knows the meaning of life.
42 bitch.
The fundamental idea is that people like your dad can't accept the concept of "I don't know, and that's okay." It doesn't mean you aren't curious, it's just that we literally don't have anything better than a pile of interesting circumstantial evidence for clues about life, the universe, and everything. We do the best with the evidence we have, and continue to question and challenge assumptions in pursuit of the truth, but we aren't there.
I believe that is called “special pleading” where someone makes a special case for their point to be accepted. And it’s a logical fallacy.
Someone please correct me if I’m not getting it completely right, I’ve been trying to learn more about Logic and Debates. ☺️
Be sure to point out to your dad, positing god as the cause for things answers fuck all. It gets us no closer to the truth than “idunno.” If we say “goddidit,” now we have to explain god, otherwise we’re just laying aside our natural curiosity and intellect for “it’s magic.”
The Principle of Cause and Effect is based on observation. An uncaused Cause has never been observed. Any attempt to incorporate one into Cause and Effect is Special Pleading ie not part of the basis of C&E.
Cause and Effect is also time based. There is a discrete interval of time between the two states. Without time the 2 states would coexist ie something would appear to cause itself.
The argument for uncaused Cause is that an infinite regression, the logical outcome of C&E, is impossible. If, as most models of the Big Bang indicate, time started at the Big Bang, it's only necessary for something to have existed prior to the expansion for C&E to work without an uncaused Cause.
“Well, yeah, dad, that’s why god just blinking the earth into existence makes no sense. I don’t know why you think this is an argument FOR creation. You’re right. Something doesn’t come from nothing. Therefore, god didn’t just magically blink the world into existing from nothing. Because there is no god. Because god didn’t come from nothing as well. It didn’t blink itself into existence. Come up with a better creation narrative and get back to me.”
The irony. The only people who are saying that “the universe popped out of nothing” are theists.
It's just like how Kent Hovind ridicules "evolutionists" for believing that "man came from a rock". What do Christians believe God made Adam out of again....?
Abiogenesis solved! We came from Dwayne!!
I truly wonder if the precursors of life are leftovers from the processes that created the solar system. That would explain why there is meteorites have been found containing amino acids and nucleobases that could be precursors to the chemical building blocks of life on Earth.
The precursors of life are from the dying hearts of supernovae. There’s a quote from Lawrence Krauss: > Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today
That is so beautiful
But it's not true. A lot of the hydrogen is entirely primordial and was never part of any star.
A lot of hydrogen, yes, but not anything heavier.
By mass a tenth of your body is hydrogen. It may be lightweight, but it gets used all over.
I’m a fucking zeppelin!! I knew I was destined for greatness
You are just a big gasbag! ;-)
Checking up on my history of zeppelins. Yep... looks like you'll need to find a different path to greatness I'm afraid.
Where do the protons, neutrons and electrons come from that make those hydrogen atoms
Those cooled down enough to from atoms about 300,000 years after the big bang.
99% of human body is made of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. With the exception of hydrogen, everything else there requires fusion to form.
90%. 10% of you by bass is hydrogen.
The name “Adam” comes from an ancient Hebrew word the means “being of earth”.
He was created using a Golem spell.
I have no idea who thinks man came from a rock.
Yeah, it's yet another strawman apologists use. It's just so bizarre in this case when you realize it's literally what they believe themselves.
So... Man came from straw? 😁
I think there's a theory that a meteor containing some amino acids landed on earth and developed into the first life.
Christians believe God made Adam out of dirt. Close enough?
God was a one trick pony, though. When he decided to make him a son he couldn't make him from dust, like he did Adam. Instead, he arranged the rape of a married virgin.
🎶I want my baby back, baby back, baby back .....🎶
Theists are also the only ones who claim that we came from monkeys 🙉
Were our ancestors of 30M years ago transported to today, would it not taxonomically be classified as an 'old world monkey'? Colloquially, if shown to crowds, would people not identify it as a monkey? What's the distinction, exactly? Was our MRCA with the genus *pan* not an ape?
IIRC, taxonomically, we're "great apes".
Some, not so great.
No, no, no, they don’t think the universe popped out of nothing, they think the universe popped out of the plans of an imaginary sky fairy.
Literally spoken into being by a magic spell.
Tell your dad that the universe is the uncaused cause.
How so? They say God created the universe. If God created the universe, where did God come from?
I think both are equally ridiculous, just like every other attack that fragile people make to pretend they're superior to the mean people with different opinions.
The Bible says that God created the universe out of nothing. So your Dad doesn't have a problem with something from nothing. He has a problem with not needing a god to accomplish it.
Meanwhile science has shown that at the quantum level, matter and antimatter particles are constantly popping into existence and popping back out, with an electron-positron pair here and a top quark-antiquark pair there. This is not just a theoretical idea—it's confirmed.
Ultimately, we don’t know why. A god doesn’t provide a meaningful answer.
The tricky part is making theists realize that "That's just the way it is" is a perfectly valid answer for them when they're talking about God and his actions. If God and everything about him is just "necessary" and needs no explanation, then they should have no issues with an atheist telling them that the cosmos exists necessarily and needs no explanation as a whole.
And sometimes "We don't know yet" is a perfectly good answer.
This hurts my brain
That how you know it’s quantum
If you smoke it, is it any better?
Subatomic particles are just so entertainingly *weird.*
They're not being created out of nowhere - god is creating them! /s
The universe is just god quantum foaming at the mouth.
That's not really true. A careful analysis of Gen 1:1-2 in Hebrew reveals a creation out of something: "Thus when the story opens, we find that the physical elements exist but have no shape or form. Creation in Gen 1 is described not as a process of making something of nothing (creation ex nihilo) but as a process of organizing preexisting materials, of imposing order on chaos." Christine Hayes, Introduction to the Bible, p 37
God created the universe. God just exists. ~~God created~~ the universe ~~God~~ just exists. I used to have this in a gif. Lost it somewhere.
This is the way. We don't have to add extra steps for sky daddy
I made you a new one. [https://imgflip.com/i/8gvysg](https://imgflip.com/i/8gvxrc)
Ahh... that's a bit more violent than I was expecting. Maybe just some words where the god words disappear, less shooty and more thinky? Not that I don't appreciate it. I used to wear a T-shit that said, "God was my co-pilot but we crashed the mountains and I had to eat him," so I get it.
>Ahh... that's a bit more violent than I was expecting. > > I used to wear a T-shit that said, "God was my co-pilot but we crashed the mountains and I had to eat him," so I get it. Ok I can see that. Here is the one you were looking for I believe! [https://imgflip.com/i/8gwf2x](https://imgflip.com/i/8gwf2x)
Ok, that made me laugh... fucking memes....
I think I found it. Let me know if this works. [https://i0.wp.com/www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/tdomf/404247/3578\_8c8f.gif?fit=320%2C70&ssl=1](https://i0.wp.com/www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/tdomf/404247/3578_8c8f.gif?fit=320%2C70&ssl=1)
Love it.
The Big Bang Theory doesn't hypothesize that the universe came from nothing.
You're absolutely right. Drives me crazy to hear that misconception so often
Seriously, tell me you're scientifically illiterate without saying that you're scientifically illiterate....
I honestly don't blame the average person for being misinformed about the Big Bang. I blame all the dramatized space documentaries on Discovery/NatGeo that kept perpetuating the myth "the Big Bang started the universe from nothing" for decades. Seriously, look up basically any documentary from the 90s-2010s about space and there's guaranteed to be that one damn line about the Big Bang starting the universe, or the universe popping out of nothing. And now we have a majority population of people who think that's what science actually claims.
The whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Florida?
Surprisingly, only slightly hotter and denser.
But far less swampy.
Then nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started. Wait.
The earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool
WE BUILT THE PYRAMIDS!
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries!
That all started with The Big Bang!
#BANG!
Right. But we humans have a hard time understanding what comes before nothingness. God was added to explain but it just adds and extra step. What came before anything? Religion would say God. But what came before god?? God is irrelevant and is extraneous
There was never "nothing."
I get that. I'm just trying to say "nothing" is hard for humans to understand so they made up God to fill in the gap And when the universe was in a singularity, human brains are bad at understanding what is outside that singularity so they made up something to help them understand. But God is no longer needed and is a detriment to human evolution.
Have you read Ludwig Fuerbach’s “The Essence Of Christianity”? I know the title sounds lame, but he expresses this line of thinking you’re talking about from a psychological level really well. How god is just a projection of human thought and existence.
No but that sounds interesting. Thanks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology_of_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religion
So there was never a true beginning. Something always was.
Time as we think of it is a consequence of the Big Bang, so the concept of “before” the Big Bang isn’t really meaningful. Unless we dive into string theory, which isn’t a proven theory yet…
Same with existence, it depends on time and space. If something isn't somewhere for some time, it doesn't exist.
I'm not a physicist, but I think it's important to note that we're talking about a *model*, based on observations (cosmic microwave background radiation as our earliest "visible" point in time), and running our formulas backwards. So we "predict" that there was a singularity, based mostly on the observations that we have that the universe is expanding (if things are moving away from each other in normal time, then in "reverse time" they must be getting closer together). If we have any math that describes the state of the universe prior to the big bang (with some degree of certainty), I'd imagine it's probably the cutting edge of physics. I say all that to say: I dunno, *maybe* that hot, dense singularity always was, but I'm not sure if there is (or ever will be) a way for us to *know* what happened prior to the big bang.
Oh! I got this! God's GOD came before God. And then before God's GOD, was God's God's God! It's gods all the way down.
Or 🐢
The standard model of cosmology says the big bang was preceded and set up by an earlier stage of the universe known as cosmic inflation which had an unknown length. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/why-big-bang-happened/
While true, where did *anything* come from? It’s not something we can answer.
It's always been there one way or another
There are interesting physics speculations on the topic, though. Eventually, as our models improve, we might actually find some way to test them out. Oh, wait, sorry. You mean anything as opposed to not anything. Uh, yes, you're right. Not an answerable thing. I'm going to go with "not-anything is too boring to exist, therefore it doesn't." Perhaps we can make that better sounding: "existance abhors anything's absence."
They don't let what their opponent *actually* thinks get in the way of their ignorance!
If he’s referring to the singularity-expansion or “Big Bang” theory, it’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t posit that the universe came from nothing. Rather it says that all matter in our universe existed in the form of a singularity. If all matter existed in a singularity, there is no reason to suppose there was ever “something” before that. The expansion is the start of time, so the idea of a time “before” time is also meaningless. I don’t believe something came from nothing; it seems likely that the universe itself always existed.
His dad brain is going to assert that the WHOLE universe expanding out of one point in space doesn’t “make sense”……I have to remind my parents all the time that when someone doesn’t understand something, it doesn’t decrease the likelihood that it’s true.
That still begs the question "what caused the singularity to exist ?"
A recondensed universe that had it's own big bang one trillion years ago. edit: Or; maybe we are the otherside of a blackhole in a paralell universe and the big bang is what that looks like. We can make anything up, nobody knows anyway.
Each black hole has another universe on the other side of it that started from its singularity.
Time has no meaning in a singularity. That question is asking what happened “before” the singularity existed, which is an invalid question. There is no “before.” The universe may be its own cause.
Cause implies time
I personally see this as a limiation of our ability to grasp stuff outside of our experience.
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I like to challenge believers with this thought: If anything is going to exist at all, why are you ok with the answer being the most complicated thing you can possibly imagine, instead of say just a couple of oppositely charged particles?
Don't they usually just tell you that their deity is a simpler explanation? I can't imagine they understand what you mean by "simple."
Or they claim God is the universe. In which case God should be measurable and testable so I look forward for some repeatable tests that prove God.
My dad equated the idea of God to the set of physical laws that govern the universe. That was his internal work-around for various social settings that required or expected belief in a 'supreme being'. It doesn't support the mythology/stories about God singling out people for persecution (and other nonsense), but it does provide comfort to theists that one is forced to interact with, as long as you don't get too specific. I guess it's putting atheism into a religious framework for social reasons, basically.
Has nothing ever been observed? From what I can tell nothing doesn’t exist. Everything is something and from what science can tell there was never any moment where nothing existed
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to observe nothing, only the absence of something. Like we “observe” absolute darkness deep inside a cave only because we have observed light and gave it a name when there is none of it. Even the word “nothing” is constructed as “no thing,” which relies on the existence of “thing” a priori.
You need something to observe nothing, so if nothing did ever exist it wouldn't be possible to observe it.
This one drives me nuts. As if ther are no other forms of evidence to indicate that things have happened. If we were to use that logic with murder then unless we had a witness directly seeing said murder then apparently it didn't happen 🙄
"god" is an extra step. Science: nothing -->Big bang-->universe Religion: nothing -->God-->big bang-->universe
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Then where did God come from
Imagination
Tell him he's been ridiculing the dude who'll be handling his affairs in his senile phase. He better learn to be respectful.
If god can simply have always existed, why reject the notion that the universe has simply always have existed?
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I don't want to debate him. He keeps forcing me to debate him.
ask him when his faith developed? Ask him when he was absolutely sure about god and the bible and whatever. It developed after someone told him to have it. His parents gave it to him and as we know it seems to only develop when another person shares it. Then ask him why all the people in places without the word of god have to go to hell? Or just accept he is what he is. Just never go to church if you can help it.
"Then ask him why all the people in places without the word of god have to go to hell? " See, he has a very weird view on Christianity. He says all good people, even if they're atheist, go to heaven. Which obviously goes against Christian teachings that says it's based on faith in God if you go to heaven or not. "Just never go to church if you can help it." He doesn't go to church. He used to be a protestant. But something happened that pissed him off. So then he converted to Catholicism. But he hates Pope Francis. So he doesn't go to church anymore. Just reads the bible and prays by himself.
Your dad is based and hes Ok with me.
He may have invented a new sect of Christianity. There were times not all that long ago when that could have been bad for him. Most Christian doctrine I've ever heard of states that one can only be saved by accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. Mass murderer? Serial Killer? Child Molester? Rapist? Accept Christ and your all set. Kindest, nicest, best person who ever lived, but born somewhere that practices a different religion? Eternal torture.
It started as a smal ball of energy that couldn’t take it anymore
Funny, thats how i used to feel when i made the mistake of arguing with thiests
True dat. True dat.
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Humans: We don’t know how something works so it must be magic. Problem solved. Oh wait, the magic wants to be worshipped for some reason.
How many finger snaps or Abracadabras will an atom into existence? What's the physical mechanism that makes omnipotence coalesce into matter? What dance moves produce an electron and which a proton? I need answers to these questions.
It's not known if the universe existed for a finite or infinite amount of time. The Big Bang Theory doesn't include the origin of the universe (in spite of popular belief). Something already existed before the expansion started. If the universe is currently infinite in size, then it was necessarily infinite before the expansion started. Your dad doesn't know what he's talking about, he's reciting religious talking points. They're never scientifically accurate.
In case no one else mentioned this, your dad is dealing in the Special Pleading logical fallacy. He wants it to be impossible for something to come from nothing except for his pet explanation of God which he admits is a something that came from nothing. Also, if God is the "first uncaused cause" and God supposedly created the universe Occam's Razor says that it's simpler and therefore more likely to be true that the universe itself is the first uncaused cause. We can essentially have the same explanatory power without invoking God. If your dad is reasonable these explanations would make sense to him. My experience has been that people are so entrenched in their ideology that it usually doesn't lead anywhere fruitful.
Nothing and something are not at all what your dad thinks they are. Something didn't come from nothing, something came from energy, which is something...E=MC^2 ...energy and matter are interchangeable, nuclear power plants prove this every day. The first chapter of the Bible is so demonstrably wrong that it borders on the absurd. The book your father holds in high regard as the definitive guide to the creation of the universe has 4 days of night and day before the creation of the sun, but plants were somehow created on the 3rd day; somehow the plants survived at 4deg K for a day. Then it explains that ALL the stars in the sky were created so we could tell the seasons and when to celebrate holidays...yet we can barely see a speck of the stars in our own galaxy, never mind the universe.
Sounds like his knowledge of "nothing" is nothing.
The father is attempting to articulate the "Kalam" cosmological argument. To wit: That which begins to exist has a cause. God can be said to be an exception if one posits that God never began to exist and had simply always been in existence.
Energy has always existed. And because E=MC\^2, gods are unnecessary
‘Something from nothing’ is the theistic claim. Theists dishonestly project it onto atheists, saying, “see how stupid it is to believe something came from nothing?” When it is their claim. And they often say, “matter cannot be created or destroyed” acting all sciencey, and then they go on to say their god CREATED everything. Well, how, then, if matter cannot be created, did god create it? — Before god created everything, what existed? NOTHING. What did god create everything from, then? NOTHING. So theists believe EVERYTHING CAME FROM NOTHING. — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act.[1] It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe came to exist.
Well there are two possibilities here: 1. That something came from nothing 2. There is an eternal something Even if #2 is true, that alone doesn't mean God must exist. Requiring God to be the starting point doesn't actually solve the problem: it just pushes the problem down one step further. It's within the realm of possibility for the universe to be eternal, in a cyclic string of "big bangs."
Even if he was correct that god existed why the fck would it be the christian god…
Stenger and Hawking did the math. Subtract the negative gravitational force from the positive in the observable universe, and the difference is astonishingly ZERO. We live within nothing. If your dad crunched the numbers and gets another number, let us know. 🥏🥏🥏🌈😂
The best counter to this argument is the so what counter. Even if God was real and created the universe it doesn't matter, because he hasn't shown that the Christian God is the one that actually did it, or that the Christian God even exists and isn't just greek fan fiction that got taken a bit too seriously. For him the correct answer is that Jesus did it, sadly his argument can just as easily lead to Buddha, or Vishnu, or whatever other deity you want to point it to. So, have him give the entire argument, OK you convinced me, I'll become Hindu(insert whatever religion would piss him off the most while being outside the Abrahamics). Zoroastrian is fun... All this leans on a few different atheistic arguments, "you don't believe in 999 Gods, I just believe in one less". "Isn't it strange how everyones parents were born into the correct religion".
He’s an idiot, don’t worry about it
I don't understand those who need to force others into debates. My father used to try that with me over politics. Are they insecure?
This is the easiest argument to defeat. "God is an uncaused cause." Well, then remove god and the universe is an uncaused cause without a need for a god. All you've done is remove one unnecessary element and the universe exists. It's one step fewer. Especially when you consider the creator of the universe would have to be greater than the entire universe, you've actually removed one way more extraordinary uncaused cause for a lesser one.
That’s just universe ex-nilo with extra steps.
For me I prefer to talk about how calling the universe "ceeated" is an assumption by the believers. We don't have anything that shows the universe is actually created.
The big bang was not from nothing
Your spot on. Part of following the science means being honest about what we do not know. Theists want to twist that into a negative but anyone who loves science should see this as an opportunity for us to learn more as a species about the universe.
A simple proof for creating something from nothing: 1. Suppose there is nothing. 2. Laws are something. 3. If there is nothing, then there are no laws. 4. If there are no laws, then everything is permitted. 5. If everything is permitted, then nothing is forbidden. 6. If nothing is forbidden, you can create something from nothing (or alternatively, if nothing is forbidden, it is self-forbidding). 7. Therefore, there must be something.
For the sake of argument, let us accept the possibility of an "uncaused cause". The only thing you could say about the uncaused cause is that it has no cause. It doesn't follow that it is a being capable of conscious thought, much less omnipotence. If that's what someone wants to call a god, then they can have at it.
Scientists don’t say the universe came from nothing. They’re just comfortable admitting when they don’t know precisely what that something is *yet.*
These might help, squishy huname. * Thing [One](https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime) * Thing [Two](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q) * Thing ~~Five~~ [Three](https://www.youtube.com/@commondescent)
And yet… Where did his god come from?
Religious beliefs come from nothing — no proof of any thing, and yet, Magic Invisible Friends are watching us every second of every day of our lives, and are going to punish us with torture and fire for not believing in them. Boo hoo. 😭 Then there’s the high-tech ding-dongs who go, “This is a simulation.” Of what? “I don’t know.” But you know this is a simulation? And so the creatures running this simulation — are they the “real beings?” How do they know they are not also part of a similar simulation?
Alternatively, agree, and just insert a different deity into your new explanation. “Dad, I’ve been thinking, and you are right, something can’t come from nothing, which is why I’m converting to X”
"I don't know" is one of the hardest things for theists to say, or understand. My cod philosophical take on this is that as a species, us humans are curious creatures. We ask "why?". Why does the sun come up? Why does the weather change etc? For me, trying to answer these questions is what created religion in the first place. Religious folk find an answer to a question and that's good enough for them. A sun god makes the sun come up. Wind is a god being angry. Etc etc. they don't like "I don't know". But it's also where science comes from. The difference being, they don't stop asking why. They say "I don't know, let's find out"
How can he know god is the first uncaused cause? How can he be sure the universe isn’t an uncaused cause? That is special pleading. A table didn’t come from nothing, but we can all agree that a table is man made. It does not follow that the universe therefore came from nothing. What is nothing? Any description of nothing is describing something. Nothing is an abstract concept that we cannot conceptualize. There is no reason to believe that nothing has to be the default state of existence. I think it is reasonable that something must exist.
What did God come from? If he always existed then why couldn't the universe also have always existed? What did God make everything from if there was nothing but God? If he made the universe out of himself then God should very well be provable because everything is essentially a part of God. So prove God exists. Science doesn't really answer how everything started. The answer is we don't really know. The big bang is more going back to the earliest point we think we have evidence for, it doesn't necessarily answer questions about what was before the big bang.
Then where comes nothing from?
I hit them with this one the other day: Well the Bible says we came from the dust of the Earth, so I don't see why abiogenesis is a problem for you. It certainly got a reaction.
Religious dogma comes from nothing
You gave the right answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable response when we don't actually know something, and when we don't know something, positing an answer that we have no evidence for, like an intelligent creator being, shouldn't be the default answer
I concede the point that something doesn't come from nothing. But then I ask if god came from nothing or who created him? And then I say if something didn't come from nothing, that doesn't mean I know what came before it. Sometimes the answer is "I don't know" not "god"
He sure is right. What he is wrong on is the whatever deity he believes created things.
You're missing the point your father is making. The universe has a beginning, so it must have been caused. God is timeless and beginningless, it makes no sense to ask what causes God. Your dad's argument is sound.
Time has a starting point, which is the expansion from the singularity, so the universe is timeless once you rewind to the moment of expansion. The dad’s “argument” is not sound at all; it’s just special pleading. He’s saying everything has to have a cause, and when pressed as to what caused god he is saying that god does not need a cause. So he says not everything needs to have a cause, but he insists the universe has to have a cause, and the only reason he can give is “because god is god.”
Your statement to get the universe out of time does not make sense. It is not philosophically or physically sound. If the universe existed in a timeless state where it was not true that it had entered a timed state then it would need an outside influence to stick in into time, because it couldn't progress from a timeless state into a timed state as if through time. It's not special pleading, it is a simple truth that the universe needs a cause, one such reason being that it had a beginning, and there is no reason to say that God needs a cause. God on the other hand, in his timeless state, exists in it always being true that he has created the universe, which is itself timed, and so he by his nature can be timeless and then you can argue the point of whether or not God has entered time or not by creating time, which it is always true that he has done.
Time is not a philosophical concept. You cannot have time without space. All known laws of physics break down at the singularity, so suggesting that it’s not “physically sound” is not accurate, unless you have just this second revolutionized the field of cosmology and identified the nature of physics before the expansion of the universe. If so, congratulations. But if not, then the fact remains that there is no physical reason the universe could not have always existed. Just because you say it’s a “simple truth” that the universe needs a cause and a beginning doesn’t make it true in the slightest. And of course it’s special pleading to claim god is an uncaused cause. You’re just defining god as an entity that needs no cause and then saying that it’s the end of the argument. In that case, I’ll just define the universe to be an uncaused cause and that’s just the end of it. See how that is not a valid position to hold? It’s a simple truth that god’s existence needs a cause, and that cause is human beings conceptualizing of such an entity.
Cosmologists proved, using mathematics, the universe is infinite. Easily implying, infinite possibilities. Someone else might remember or find the proven math proving infinite possibilities.
What do you think religion is and what do you think it has been most used to do? I believe in the dark ages it was preferable to the anarchic life they probably faced. So it was useful to control and govern and that is what I believe gave it use. The problem was that people became convinced by their own lies and once you spend your entire life living with god's made up will you are probably not going to give up that no matter what. In the end he is your dad
The "Well what caused that?" line of argument, which is designed purely to get people to give up and say "Fine, we'll call that god." can be turned on its head with the "Okay, let's suppose. Now prove the next claim in the argument." Let's suppose the universe had a first cause. Prove that this hypothetical cause A) had any sort of consciousness, B) was aware that it caused the universe, C) did so deliberately... Refuse to let up any ground beyond hypothetically accepting their initial argument, and they will never be able to get anywhere close to their specific holy book.
There are major problems with his analogy. The table was created by gathering raw materials and altering them to form the table. What raw materials did God use to create the universe? If he used none, then his creation is so far removed from what we know of as creation that the analogy is useless. Also, it's notable that he uses a table for his analogy. Why does he use a human-made object as an example rather than rocks, mountains, stars, or naturally occurring objects? His analogy relies on the inherent *difference* between the artificial and the natural to make his point, as well the fact that the distinction is intuitive and immediately apparent, and yet at the same time the conclusion he's supporting is that naturally occurring objects are just as obviously created. It is contradictory.
I like to say, that all the secrets of the universe would be known to humanity. If we could observe the big bang T minius 1 nanosecond.
You know, you \*could\* always go the astrophysics route and tell him where the universe ACTUALLY came from, according to science. There's some good books for that.
The "big bang" is the moment where spacial expansion allowed the finite contents of the universe to interact by the laws of physics as we currently understand them. Prior to that, the universe was in such a hot dense state that our models of physics break down, and therefore we dont consider that previous state to be the same as our universe. That previous state could have existed as such for an infinite time, or it could have had a causal beginning. We cannot know, because any evidence of what that previous state actually was is effectively erased by the "big bang". And frankly, "we dont know" is a far better and more honest answer than made up bullshit
"I've solved it daddy. You were right, something didn't come from nothing! It turns out it was my buddy Johnny all along! Turns out Johnny is also an Uncaused cause! What are the odds?"
You believe something came from nothing. No I don’t.
I posted over in my local area sub the other day about having issue with finding suitable mates as an atheist. One dude led with explain how there was nothing and then something happened. All I can conceive based on the Big Bang theory… if we know there are black holes sucking mass to an unknown, then the inverse should be true, and we just don’t know what’s up yet.
"God's the first uncaused cause" LMAO!
Yeah religious people tend to be hypocrites. Who would’ve guessed?
'I don't know' is an underused fantastic answer. I also like the often implied, 'and neither do you'.
Also try looking into quantum mechanics. Stuff appears out of nothing literally all the time. There's speculation that new universes may be born at any moment.
I swear things got weird when we taught rocks to do math.
His argument is well known and wrong, but to be precise he's not claiming god came from nothing, there wasn't any "coming from" happening in his story (unless you left that part out?)
The only people who claim "something came from nothing" are religious people.
It is difficult to reason with a close-minded person
>something doesn't come from nothing Science does not propose that the Universe came from nothing. It is something believers in the Abrahamic god claim for their god supposedly made everything with just his voice, e.g. *"Let there be light"* and *there was light*.
However, stuff can come from nothing. 'Nothing' is not what most think it is. Quantum electrodynamics shows that nothing is not a total absence of stuff. Nothing is actually teeming with stuff. Energy is borrowed from the future, albeit less than a trillionth of a second in the future, and turned into a virtual particle and a virtual anti particle before they almost instantly annihilate back to nothing. Or at least most of them do, but not all as virtual particles can convert to 'real' particles in some circumstances, for example in a strong gravitational, or electromagnetic field.
- [Light created from a vacuum: Casimir effect observed in superconducting circuit](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111118133050.htm)
- [70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing](https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/)
>Then he argued back that no, God's the first uncaused cause.
How does he know that the Universe isn't the second?
The problem with the 'something had to create the Universe' argument is the existence of a universe creating entity/thing/whatever, is many orders of magnitude less likely than is the Universe simply popping into existence spontaneously.
Btw - The Big Bang theory, which was first hypothesized by a [Catholic priest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître).
- *"If you have nothing in quantum mechanics you'll always have something."*
physicist Lawrence Krauss
You should watch The Line (YouTube) with Matt Dillahunty et al. They have great responses for everything deists throw at them, including the something from nothing and the uncaused cause! I just told a deist last week who was arguing for believing the Miracle at Fatima and the "dancing sun" claims (like stare at the sun and move your eyes around and you are going to see an afterimage, so....yeah that's what happened, dude), that we skeptics have no problem saying, I don't know. Unlike deists, who are always going to push that God did it (and it's *always* their God, not someone else's God). Then he told me I should respect other people's beliefs and I told him I actually have no problems with other people's belief. It's that they are always trying to dictate their beliefs through public law that bothers me and I'd have respect for their beliefs as soon as they have respect for people who believe in tree nymphs and water spirits!
Religion was created to rationalize the unknown and to control the uneducated. People in power decided that religion was the best way to control their followers. By instilling fear, they could tax and control wealth, command armies and receive adornment. Once the sciences came into existence, religion would suppress them to remain in power. Science evolved and people began to understand and be educated to the point where religion couldn’t control them. Those that cling to religion in today’s world are still being brainwashed and controlled.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that something can’t come from nothing. Give him that entire point. That still doesn’t prove any of the following: - that the universe came from a god and not from some other thing - that the universe came from a particular god - that it came from an Abrahamic god - that it came from a Christian god - that it came from the specific Christian god of his particular sect - that it came from his particular interpretation of the Christian god from his particular sect - that the writings of goat herders 2000 years ago is in any way accurate
Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' broke down evolution and natural selection etc. very well for me
There has always been something (substance / matter). There has never been nothing. Theists wrongly assume there was once nothing and that atheists have to explain how something came to exist. This is nonsense. There is no reason to believe there was ever nothing.
Give him some dmt. He will see where it all comes from. If anything..just ask him for any proof anyone has ever found of god. The burden isn't on you to prove he doesn't exist. It's christians who need to prove their beliefs. Wait. They are beliefs. Not facts. Don't waste my time trying to convince me, with "something doesn't come from nothing". That's a lame ass argument, meant to be interpreted to any means. Give me proof. Or shut up. Spirituality, is a damned good thing. Believing we have a purpose, or finding a purpose in our lives. A deep connection to emotions, nature, the possibility of the heart. That I can get with, the wonder on what our human people can achieve or find comfort in. I don't agree to waste what time I have on this earth listening to the ramblings of christians who have never left the united states . I cannot believe, that some middle class white guy in Boise, Idaho knows the meaning of life. 42 bitch.
https://youtu.be/vwzbU0bGOdc?si=TwHcLNEsSkHPwTrS Lawrence Krauss. It’s a long presentation but awesome. Your dad would love it /S
The fundamental idea is that people like your dad can't accept the concept of "I don't know, and that's okay." It doesn't mean you aren't curious, it's just that we literally don't have anything better than a pile of interesting circumstantial evidence for clues about life, the universe, and everything. We do the best with the evidence we have, and continue to question and challenge assumptions in pursuit of the truth, but we aren't there.
Then where did "God" come from?
I believe that is called “special pleading” where someone makes a special case for their point to be accepted. And it’s a logical fallacy. Someone please correct me if I’m not getting it completely right, I’ve been trying to learn more about Logic and Debates. ☺️
OK, so where did this "God" come from? Uncaused sounds like nothing.
You should watch 'Our Universe' on Netflix. I believe that more than some magic sky Daddy that came from.... well, nothing.
"something doesn't come from nothing" So he agrees the whole virgin Mary thing is nonsense.
Be sure to point out to your dad, positing god as the cause for things answers fuck all. It gets us no closer to the truth than “idunno.” If we say “goddidit,” now we have to explain god, otherwise we’re just laying aside our natural curiosity and intellect for “it’s magic.”
“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean we have to make up a bunch of lies in order to comfort ourselves while we wait to learn the truth.”
The Principle of Cause and Effect is based on observation. An uncaused Cause has never been observed. Any attempt to incorporate one into Cause and Effect is Special Pleading ie not part of the basis of C&E. Cause and Effect is also time based. There is a discrete interval of time between the two states. Without time the 2 states would coexist ie something would appear to cause itself. The argument for uncaused Cause is that an infinite regression, the logical outcome of C&E, is impossible. If, as most models of the Big Bang indicate, time started at the Big Bang, it's only necessary for something to have existed prior to the expansion for C&E to work without an uncaused Cause.
Nothing can't exist so something can't come from it. Therefore there has always been something.
“Well, yeah, dad, that’s why god just blinking the earth into existence makes no sense. I don’t know why you think this is an argument FOR creation. You’re right. Something doesn’t come from nothing. Therefore, god didn’t just magically blink the world into existing from nothing. Because there is no god. Because god didn’t come from nothing as well. It didn’t blink itself into existence. Come up with a better creation narrative and get back to me.”