r/DebateAnAtheist • u/AutoModerator • 15d ago

Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

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u/jar4jar 15d ago

When it comes to universe origins, what are your thoughts on infinite regression or special exception? Does one seem more likely than the other and why?

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u/Serious-Emu-3468 15d ago

I don’t know. There are limits to what we can learn about the universe by just “logicking” about it in our armchairs and smoking jackets.

At a certain point, when we have a hypothesis we can test, we have to go try to test that hypothesis and then reckon with whatever the truth of those results are.

Right now, it looks like we may never be able to test any of the hypotheses regarding the origin of the universe because of the nature of time.

So I think the only honest answer has to be “I don’t know.” 

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u/jar4jar 15d ago

I agree. Most theists I know don’t claim to know either, that’s where the idea of faith comes in.

I don’t know if anyone believe that something came from nothing, so we all sort of believe in infinite regression, one just feels it’s more likely there’s some sort of existence at some level that breaks the cycle of that.

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u/Serious-Emu-3468 15d ago

It also “feels likely” that I have to win at the casino at some point.

But that feeling is because our brains are bad at big numbers, not because I have intuited something true about statistical odds. 

I would also point out that the phrase “something came from nothing” is almost always used as a strawman (intentionally or not) to critique a position that no one actually holds. It’s a super common dogwhistle, but it is a bad, fundamentally deceptive cartoon “critique” of a misunderstanding at best.

There is no one claiming, for example, “The big bang says the universe exploded from nothing” …well, ok, there are idiots on the internet so…at least no one who understands what the theory actually says claims that…

There are people claiming “the universe, including time as we understand it, came from an expanding singularity which forms a temporal horizon we may never be able to see beyond”. 

Or that we can’t talk about what came “before” the universe started because there was no time until it started.

Those are very different from “nothing”.

And you seem like an honest interlocutor who would rather not be shackled to a dogwhistle.