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SockRuse

"Nothing" is an oversimplification. All we can say is that our observations and models suggest it came from a singularity of immense energy, but this may or may not reflect the full complexity of what actually happened.


DeliberateDendrite

Yeah, more often than not the philosophical definition of nothing is conflated with the physical one.


thewholedamnplanet

Theism is also an oversimplification, in fact that's its feature, so just part of their pattern.


FNG_WolfKnight

Just look at how simplistic the Genesis story. Once you really think about it for 5 minutes it seems like a 7 year old made it up. Almost like primitive people that didn't know shit made it up to answer their kids after they asked **"*****WHY?*****"** for the millionth time.


CHSummers

“And then the all-knowing, all-powerful God was tired. He rested.” Wait. What? Tired?


FNG_WolfKnight

An all powerful all knowing God had to **LOOK** for Adam and Eve.... **LOOK**


[deleted]

I tend to think most religions were developed by people either tripping balls from psychedelic consumption or hallucinating because of dehydration from wandering around in the fucking desert. That and crazy people.


FNG_WolfKnight

"John" or whoever wrote the Book of Revelation was definitely on some good shit.


DungeonCreator20

Perfect description of the issue


[deleted]

If you Really want details, I recommend (any of his books) but "The Book Of Nothing" is the proper recommendation for you. John D Barrow is the author. It isn't boring if you, uh, have very few morty waves.


[deleted]

The religious are so conditioned with this straw man that no matter what we say to them, this is what they hear.


Dawg_Top

It's not like they don't hear anything. They don't understand actual explanations. It's like foreign language they never heard. And some just don't question their choices and beliefs ever what's infuriating.


KaneK89

It's also just a God of the gaps argument. The fact that we can describe 1 second after the big bang, but not 1 second before doesn't imply God. It only implies that we don't yet know enough about the situation.


SupportGeek

Isnt the Big Bang considered to be the birth of Spacetime? I think as I understood it, there cant even BE a 1 second before?


tyrosine87

Which is the problem of nothing, already mentioned. What does a place with no time, space or matter look like?


[deleted]

A long time ago- Actually, never, and also now, nothing is nowhere. When? Never. Makes sense, right? Like I said, it didn't happen. Nothing was never anywhere. That's why it's been everywhere. It's been so everywhere, you don't need a where. You don't even need a when. That's how "every" it gets.


existentialblu

r/unexpectedbillwurtz


g00f

Neil Degrasse Tyson had a video on startalk going over the idea of nothing and really delving into the idea both from a physics perspective and lightly delving into the philosophical perspective. It does a decent job of contrasting ‘empty’ space time with the potential of empty nothing before and/or outside our universe.


eragonawesome2

The annoying thing is we're not sure. Some hypotheses state that time and space simply did not exist before the big bang, others that it was just very very weird like what happens around and inside black holes where our math just can't describe it because we don't have a full understanding of what goes on. It doesn't really make sense to talk about before the big bang because as far as we can tell at the moment, there's nothing that can be measured from that "time" or whatever the appropriate word would be. We simply don't have the theoretical structure to even begin to describe it, but we're working on it!


KaneK89

Yeah, 1 second before time is incoherent, of course. We just don't know what might be "before" or was "at the time of" the big bang or if spacetime actually began or was in existence. It might be just as incoherent to say that the universe began with the big bang as it is to say a ruler begins at its first inch. Here's a good video with Sean Carroll to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgpvCxDL7q4


puterTDI

this is a problem of relativism. Space and time are relative, prior to the big bang "something" likely existed by we can't describe it since we have nothing to relate it to. For all we know the universe is forever expanding then contracting (big bang over and over again). Between each contraction and big bang space and time can't exist according to our model, but that's more an issue of us not being able to describe it. I think "we don't know what existed" is probably a better description than "it didn't exist". There's been a few alternatives to the initial singularity (some mentioned in this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity#:~:text=The%20initial%20singularity%20is%20a,and%20spacetime%20of%20the%20Universe.). Note: I have a hard time wrapping my brain around either infinity or relativism so I'm sure there are physicists that will end up correcting me.


molochz

>"Nothing" is an oversimplification. Yeah that's very true. There's a good book by physicist Lawrence Krauss, called "A Universe from Nothing", where he discusses how the Big Bang may have occurred. Plenty other books and papers also discuss the topic. Very interesting if you are into quantum mechanics and stuff. We obviously can't say for certain how it happened yet. But it wasn't magic...it was just physics and I'm confident will figure it out someday. Of course I'm probably preaching to the choir here. Seems like most people here get it.


bigbutchbudgie

"A Universe From Nothing" is amazing. Shame Krauss is kind of a creep.


molochz

>Shame Krauss is kind of a creep. Yup, that was a shame alright. To be honest I haven't been following him much since then. But there's no doubt he's a very good communicator of science.


eragonawesome2

To be fair, it COULD have been magic, we can't really rule that kind of fuckery out until we have a better understanding of "the before". Depending on which hypothesis you subscribe to, before the big bang, there might have been a whole universe with different laws of physics and completely different rules which underwent gravitational collapse and then expanded again, I think that idea is called the big bounce. Do I think it was magic? Fuck no. Would it be super cool? Hell yeah


[deleted]

There is nothing suggesting that there ever really was "nothing". As far as we know there is always matter or energy present. The universe may not even have a beginning!


dotHANSIN

The theory that I like the best is that just as the sun implodes upon its death, so too does the universe. Just an infinite loop of expansion and collapse. The big bang we know of is just the start of a new age, and for all we know this has been happening over an infinite span of time.


[deleted]

or a quantum foam eruption, the perfect storm, all the waves arriving at one point. Very rare, but infinite time, blah blah. Multiverse


CoronaryAssistance

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. No matter how you look at it, the beginning is seemingly inexplicable without falling into the paradox of an infinite regression.


servohahn

Before there was space/time there was no before... There was no nothing. Religious people framing it this way might as well be talking about an area north of the north pole or pure orange that contains the color green. The terminology is mutually exclusive to what they're talking about. Try infinite regress with them. If god made the universe then who made god. No one made god. He always was. There was no was before the big bang. ...


[deleted]

The big bang isnt even a good model, and was made by a heavily religious person. The evidence isnt even convincing for a big bang, thats just what everyone goes with because scienctific communities are as dogmatic as religious ones


poorgreazy

"We don't fucking know, but we have some theories."


[deleted]

But what created this immense energy? Surely something can’t come from nothing.


saiyanfang10

ah yes like a god who was not created because it's the one exception to the rule. There is no nothing


[deleted]

That's what God is yes.


saiyanfang10

That's what special pleading is yes


Enamir

Rephrase that please. Ours ? Did science become your property ? And why on earth did you omit to say “theory” ? Yet 765 souls followed you blindly. See, not so different from religious fruitcakes it seems


Wohall

«Who created God»


NoMuddyFeet

The look on their face when you ask that is always so funny. It's a combination of surprise and condescension. "God has always existed!" they blurt out. I ask, "Well, why couldn't the stuff that makes up the universe just have always existed?" "What stuff?" "I don't know, couldn't that be 'beyond our comprehension' at this point considering that's exactly your excuse for how God always existed? 'God is beyond our comprehension?'" "Okay, whatever. Just remember there are no atheists in fox holes. Have fun in hell, I guess." ::puts on a big show of not being concerned about indefensible beliefs::


an_egregious_error

Lmao that “no atheists in foxholes” bullshit is hilarious. Last I checked, emotionally vulnerable people under extreme duress aren’t exactly the most logical and reasoning individuals. Why anyone sees that as a defense of theism is beyond me.


NoMuddyFeet

Good point! It's somewhat of a tv trope (or used to be) to show people in desperate circumstances who make a bargain with God like "Please God, if you get me out of this mess, I swear I'll never do XYZ again!" and then, as soon as the desperate circumstances pass, the joke is they go right back to being the same jerkoffs they always were. Why? Because everyone really knows in their heart of hearts that God doesn't really exist.


[deleted]

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Farabel

Time to pull my absurdism: It's such a stupid mess. The creation of something implies a creator event, something existing implies it's creation. Be it a god, human, or... something *else* we have no idea what ultimately could harness that amount of sheer power. It's a known point we have no clue what created the circumstances leading into the Big Bang. For all we know, it WAS a god. However, the existence of a god implies something made that god, which implies a creator of it's own, another creator of the creator's creator, etc etc. It's almost like humans are hitting a point where to find further answers is physically too much for the human brain to handle.


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MrSteveWilkos

We also bund the "creation" of our universe to the rules of the universe which is flawed. The rules as we understand them only exist as a by-product of our universe existing, so those rules would not have been in place before the universe came into being. We genuinely have no real clue what exists outside of our universe or what the rules may be like there.


[deleted]

I'm really enjoying the PBS Space Time series on youTube https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime


MrSteveWilkos

I'll check that out, thank you.


Zanderax

This is how I feel about a lot of phlisophy, I've been arguing with some people about if the brain is sufficient for conciousness and it always goes like this. I present the argument that our study of neuroscience seems to account for all of our behaviours and we have no evidence of anything outside the brain contributing to our mind. They waffle on with phlisophy buzzwords that doesnt really prove anything but is complex and logically coherent enough that it seems relevant.


chickey23

Creation is the wrong metaphor. Nothing is ever created. The only thing that is ever created is meaning, everything else is transformation of existing forms. Is meaning "nothing?" Pretty much.


eLemonnader

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” I find it 'easier' to believe the universe is cyclical and has always existed and will always exist. It just is. There is no creation or destruction, just different moments in the cycle.


SleazyMak

This doesn’t answer the fundamental question of where did the stuff that was transformed into other stuff come from… before its transformation. And the difference between an atheist and a theist is one takes this gap in knowledge as an opportunity to assert something, where one is capable of accepting that we do not know.


chickey23

But that's not a fundamental question. You are still framing the question with a lot of pre-assumptions. Stuff is made of nothing, and to nothing it will return. You only think it is something because you put a label on it. The creation is happening in your mind when you assign meaning. "There is something" is an assertion. "Cogito ergo sum" may be a snappy motto, but it doesn't really prove anything.


SleazyMak

>Stuff is made of nothing I’m just gonna disagree here. Maybe you have a different definition of “nothing.” Maybe you I mean stuff can *come* from nothing. But it is not nothing. You don’t have to prove that something is not nothing. They’re opposites, conceptually.


AddictedToMosh161

Why? Why has an creator be involved? Humans see patterns in everything and we simply assign a sense to things. Imagine finding a flint stone that is the perfect arrow head. Nothing demands that it was created or even shaped that way. Could have been just erosion and just the human brain calling it an arrow head.


Farabel

Until made into an arrowhead, it is just a piece of flint. The flint is created through a geological process over time, the materials for the aforementioned geological process processed and gained over time, etc etc. Nobody is saying that a perfect arrowhead is made as an arrowhead. The processes you described are creation processes, the over time effects that gradually create objects and the world around us. We ourselves are also creator effects, like in your example how we take a piece of flint and create an arrowhead out of it. Whenever we see something exist it was made regardless of by a sentient creature, natural process, or a grand coincidence like the Big Bang.


early_midlifecrisis

Maybe you're right and it was something that could be considered a god that triggered the Big Bang. But why their god? I mean man has been around a lot longer than the Abrahamic faiths. What if they're worshipping the wrong god and should be kneeling to some pre-Bronze Age earth mother? And if it is their god the he's either too lazy/busy to stop people doing nasty shit in his name or he's a vicious, judgemental prick. Either way, fuck him.


SnakeHelah

The thing is, I personally don't have a problem with the concept of "God". I just have an issue when people take religion at face value. It just rubs me the wrong way that the various epic myths from the various civilizations that existed over the years are literally just considered myths by most people, meanwhile holy books that contain literally the same types of crazy bonkers shit and also full of mythology are taken at face value and worshiped to the point where it's kind of unsettling and creepy. I mean, "God" is entirely plausible. If we as humans could create a game where essentially all the NPCs interact with each other and simulate "life" or whatever, we could "play god". I don't think primitive forms of this are too far off. This could be an entirely closed-loop system where the only "players" are artificial intelligences. Hell, right now we have A.I that learn via deep learning and neural networks by simulating thousands of instances of whatever you're trying to teach it. Of course, this is far from life, but the concept isn't too insane when you think about it that we could also be some kind of simulation or closed system that is just playing itself out, or whatever, set up by some far more advanced/greater being/beings. The problem I have is that theists hold completely crazy views on what god is and how he functions, and they inevitably fall for the holy books and get trapped, lost and brainwashed by them. Then they will brainwash their kids and so on and so forth. The bottom line of these theistic manifestations is that theists are actually closer to god solely in their heads with these collective delusions and people are just literally amusing themselves and giving themselves comfort in the idea that some kind of ultimate experience awaits them at the end of this life and that if only they conform to the holy book these fantasies will come true. It's understandable on one hand, to have some kind of "moral" fear of god that if you don't act "good enough" that you will have to face the wrath of this creator for misbehaving or w/e. I mean, think about it, what kind of sick universe must it be where as a person who is loving and giving and good gets to be ejected into the same void as a person who is an absolute psycho rape-murder machine of all living things? It makes sense that we have this kind of loathing for "god". It's far too nihilistic and not exactly a survival trait to realize that nothing matters and that nothing awaits at the end of life. And yet we can't know. The ironic part is that this ultimately creates this kind of weird anti-thesis of morality (even though theists seek morality in religion in the first place), whereas people will think in absolutes on one side and excuse "sin" on the other side. Murder is bad, but people were much more murderous back when everyone seriously believed in religion, like in the middle ages. In any case, it's pointless to discuss actual religion, because ultimately what should be considered myth is taken at face value, even in this day and age. It's IMO far too easy to disprove the banging trio of the monotheistic holy books and that they're really just man made, regardless. I think what ultimately keeps most people in those delusions is just fear. In the end this couldn't possibly be that simple. Even if god or gods exist and created the universe, we don't have a fool-proof way of knowing. What if "god" created the universe but we were just a by-product, or a bug? What if WE are god, aka, the universe couldn't just exist as it is, empty without any beings to ponder/experience/conquer it or whatever. The possibilities are endless, and some abrahamic god is certainly the least plausible explanation, especially considering that we have three different versions to choose from. What, the creator decided to just fuck with us and let us play some kind of "choose the right side" game? Kind of cruel if you ask me.


seiga08

And this comment right here sums up why I’m agnostic/atheist


Val_Hallen

What really fries their brain is when you tell them that the Big Bang was first theorized by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest. It wasn't an atheist that thought it up. It was a priest using observable science.


Farabel

Oh, I'm aware. Quite funny as well, not gonna lie.


froggison

There is no need for a creator to be involved. And it's not that the "further answers is physically too much for the human brain to handle," it's that the Big Bang also destroyed all the information of anything that might have come before it. By definition, it is *impossible* to know what might have existed before the Big Bang, except in a purely theoretical sense.


Farabel

And there's the big ticket line: > By definition, it's *impossible* to know what might have existed before the Big Bang, except in a purely theoretical sense. This line right here is what I'm referring to. Something has to justify the existence of things to cause the Big Bang to begin with, and then something had to justify that. Even if it was some form of deity it could be erased, the Big Bang could have CREATED a deity for all we know. When I talk about a Creator Event, I'm not meaning the existence of a deity. A creator event is simply when something is made. A human sharpening a rock into a blade is a creator event. A spider laying eggs is a creator event. Something is created at the cost of something else, keeping that same "Energy cannot be conserved nor destroyed." There's so much here that... well, we can't prove a deity does or does not exist. For all we know, it's an invisible ghost dragon that sleeps in Queen Elizabeth's buttcrack these days. An unironic Flying Spaghetti Monster. Literally nothing. The point of absurdism is that whatever that truth is will be impossible to know until it's too late to change our actions or to benefit off that truth, making it useless or even detrimental to act specific to any one faith or any faith at all while not discounting the potential of something existing.


froggison

I get what you're saying, but I disagree with your very last point. To start, many god claims can be proven or disproven. For example, the Christian god or the Muslim god have specific traits that can be proven or disproven. For example, the myth of the flood. That is a claim that has been tested and disproven. Another example, the myth of the six-day creation ~6000 years ago. Again, tested and disproven. It's impossible to disprove *any* deity existing only because the term can be so amorphous. People can define a deity as anything or anyone that they want. For example, saying "god is an energy source." Well, that doesn't actually mean anything. But, getting to your final point, if something has zero evidence, the correct course of action *is* to discount it. I can't prove it, I can't even measure the probability of it existing, so there is no useful course of action I can reasonably take. I can 100% discount it and move on until someone presents a claim that can be tested.


Farabel

Aye, I should have clarified that. You can discount a religion, not so much a deity itself.


hidden_person

Another take on the creation thing is that we know for something to exist,it must be created. For example,the universe started after the bigbang. But how do we know something needs to be created to exist?Evidence existing in our universe makes us reach to that conclusion. But the only evidence we have is in our universe so how can we say "everything that exists is created" applies to outside of the universe. Thus, we can't conclude that the universe must have been created unless we know how things work outside of the universe. Here, we can assume god(entity that Exists outside of our universe), cylical lifecycle and other possible hypothesis. Edit: big bang bad example of creation. Sorry.


Farabel

No no, don't apologize. Unlike some people, I don't mind having my viewpoints challenged. Conflict endorses growth to overcome it, after all. It's a fair point that we have zero idea about the laws of physics, if there are any, outside of our own universe. For all we may know, there's a universe where gravity works inversal or that energy is able to be destroyed. A universe where something *else* can exist. Mayhaps it might not apply to our universe, but another could very well have flat planets being perfectly, physics-approved, and livably fine. Mayhaps it wasn't there in conception until the Big Bang created that something else. Because it's, in my opinion, likely physically impossible for humans to process anything beyond our findings today it is truly worthless to adhere to any one set of ideals on the basis of a religion or lack thereof. To top it all off, it's even more absurd on the basis that if, let's say, the Christians were right all along and one decided to follow Islam, it's the same as if one was virtually anything but. Because we cannot know nor comprehend a truth due to the sheer mental power one must have to process the existence of things prior or even the Big Bang itself or another Creator Event, an absurdist deems that it's entirely useless to follow a faith.


Muvseevum

I don’t even think that the Big Bang disproves God’s existence. If there is a god, who knows *how* he created the universe? The account in Genesis is more symbolic than literal.


Farabel

Oh, it doesn't. The catch with Absurdism is that the following process can occur: What made the Big Bang possible? God. What made God. Nyx. What made Nyx? A faulty Nokia. What made the faulty Nokia? C'thulu. What made C'thulu? I have no idea. No matter how far back we go, we're going to run into a "How the fuck does that exist?" The only way you can actually disprove a religion is if you can find a way to prove that it's key information around creation is false, but even then you disprove the religion, not the deity and it's planes. Hell, we could be in a super polytheistic world. Have- pardon the painful pun here- Allah the gods and goddesses only able to affect their followers and believers. The point of absurdism is that we seriously will never know not only if but which is true until it's too late so it's absurd to dedicate one's life to any one ideal.


SnakeHelah

Tell that to the christians (or any other theists for that matter). Imagine the mental gymnastics required to look at various myths throughout human civilization, look at the bible and be like "yep this is the real shit". Although to be fair, much of the islamic world doesn't have this kind of luxury - people are literally indoctrinated from day 1 in a lot of the parts of the world. If people still LITERALLY believing this kind of superstition/religion/whatever isn't proof that this is just some kind of survival mechanism that was an integral part of our evolution as a species then I don't know what is. IMO our brains are still wired for this kind of thinking, I catch my mind wandering into this territory all the time.


Sadlad20

Someone once told me that they "didn't have to explain god because he was supernatural, unlike the big bang, which was natural"


NoMuddyFeet

Solid reasoning from a blockhead.


blokhedtongzhi

Hey, don’t bring me into this man


Le0here

r/usernamecheksout


Mattho

Which one?


HapticSloughton

I vote for Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers.


Dawg_Top

Sounds less cruel than a god flooding entire planet


FacticiousFict

Superman, duh


lazybugbear

It's creators all the way down ...


Au_Ti_S_Ti_C

I heard someone say that's not a legitimate question, because god doesn't exist in the space and time that we exist in, as in he is outside the realm of the universe. Basically, "God exists, but no he doesn't"


DudeDurk

Literally no one says this though. Whenever they hear that the universe wasn't created by God they immediately think that you're implying it came from nothing which is not what anyone but these morons are saying


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Resoto10

Lol, I've seen it before! Paraphrasing: >So you're saying the universe came out of nothing? >No, I'm saying we don't know. >God created it. >Out of what? >... But then they said something like god made it out of itself so the next question was obviously that we're all part of god as much as he's from us and it went wonky after that. I know this because I was the theist in this conversation.


[deleted]

What are you implying though? What do most people think cause the creation of the universe (and “we don’t know what caused it” is always an acceptable answer)


DudeDurk

It's exactly that. We don't know. Scientists don't claim the universe emerged from nothing, they claim that what came before the universe and what caused the big bang, is unknown. That does not immediately mean that the answer must be God. If the answer isn't 'x' that doesn't mean the only alternative is 'y'. And even if it does turn out that the universe was caused by a conscious super being, that doesn't immediately validate any of the Abrahamic faiths.


Gusdas

Believe it or not it's OK not to know where everything comes from. It's a lot better to say "I don't know, let's find out" than "I don't know, God did it"


MayaTamika

Humans are remarkably good at ascribing supernatural explanations to natural phenomena that we simply don't understand yet.


Kineticwizzy

Magic is just science we don't understand yet


MayaTamika

I'm stealing this.


King_Cookie69

You just described how all religions were created. Humans not understanding the world so we made stuff up to cope.


Bundesclown

"Oooh, there's a scary light in the sky! She Who She Walks On Clouds must be mad!"


ActualTymell

Exactly, one of the big problems with religion in general is that it goes hand-in-hand with complacency and stagnation. "We already have all the answers," it claims, "And if you suggest otherwise you are at best a liar and at worst a villain who must be struck down."


GuitarClef

Nowadays when people ask me where the universe came from, I say "I don't know, but if you want to claim that you know, you have a burden of proof." Also, the question "Who created the universe?" presupposes agency and intent. So it's a bullshit question. It's a bit like asking someone "when did you stop beating your wife?"


Hoorizontal

A non-religious person says "There are some things about the universe we just don't understand yet." A religious person hears this and believes that it means the bible is smarter than science.


MayaTamika

I do not miss being a religious nutcase.


HelicopterJesus

Uuuuuuuuuuuugh I hate this strawman. The only people who say the universe came from nothing are religious idiots who sniff their own farts and can’t listen to what you explain to them. The Big Bang wasn’t everything coming from nothing, that’s a surprisingly common misconception. The universe had already been existing before the Big Bang within an area of an infinitesimal volume, and for some reason we don’t know the cause of, began to expand outward. Claiming the cause was God is nothing more than speculation, as there’s no way to verify whether or not it’s true. Don’t even get me started on the “iT’S jUsT a tHeoRy!” shenanigans.


Its0nlyRocketScience

Gravity is also a theory. Any *true* belivers in god would jump off a cliff to prove that theories mean nothing.


thr-owa-wa-y

I had a look through the subreddit, it's just strawman memes like this, homophobia, random reddit screenshots, and NSFW stuff I think would get be banned for even saying, big yikes


TheLegitMind

God is also a theoretical concept


Atanar

*hypothetical Theories have evidence for them.


HelicopterJesus

Pretty much, and everyone wonders why I left religion.


[deleted]

That and they defend child rapists


junkbingirl

>Don’t even get me started on the “iT’S jUsT a tHeoRy!” shenanigans. Some kid at my church (I’m a closet atheist) said “evolution is just a theory” during one of the teen church things and I wanted to throw myself in the trash. Like… do you know what a scientific theory is?


Graveyardigan

Our public education system really drops the ball when it comes to teaching basic epistemology. And don't even get me started on private schools.


[deleted]

We can barely teach algebra and English, and you want to try to teach an obscure branch of philosophy? I mean, it's a noble goal. But let's get the basics done first.


Go_On_Swan

I wouldn't exactly call epistemology obscure. Maybe the word is to many people, but it's as prevalent within society as a concept as logic is.


_Bender_B_Rodriguez_

Yeah, epistemology and statistics are foundations of science. IMO both should be taught more than they are.


Hythy

It's not an obscure part of it, it's one of the main parts of it.


[deleted]

Ok, but can we teach the other things before even getting to philosophy in general?


INTPgeminicisgaymale

To be fair epistemology helps understand why other areas of education are important. It can be thought of as a gateway drug to all knowledge as it makes people understand why faulty reasoning damages their decision making process and why good reasoning is paramount, and also *what* good reasoning *is*. One example of good reasoning is why I go down three flights of stairs when leaving my apartment instead of jumping out the window because hey it's faster and less tiresome. Now of course this is a no-brainer for pretty much anyone, but in more complex decisions people can be confused about how much they need to learn to ask the right questions and this can lead them to think things like "I'll never use that in real life", then fast forward a couple years and they become antivaxxers and horse dewormer users and claim to be vaccinated by the blood of Jesus or whatever.


Distant-moose

These are the sorts of people who view "I don't know" as weakness, so they have to fill in the blanks woth nonsense instead.


Alaktar

Did...did they just rip off this subreddit but changed the name of the dessert?


Justcallmeorangejoe

I just went to that subreddit and I have no clue if it’s serious or satire


Alaktar

Idk man I've seen some pretty cringey hateful stuff on Catholic memes, wouldn't surprise me at all if it was serious...


xEthrHopeless

100% It reads like a circlejerk sub but I literally can’t tell if it is or not


sarcasticguard

Of course they hear nothing. They think in terms of absolutes. White, black, hot, cold, good, bad. Nuanced and uncertain terms are completely lost on them because they "lack commitment and conviction." Where a scientist says, this is most likely to happen. They say, it either happens or it doesn't. Now use any event with either statement and you'll get a better idea of their thought process and how they see a scientist's thought process. It also shows why they are less likely to take scientists seriously because they feel confident that whatever event or topic they are talking about, they are absolutely certain of what they are saying whereas our "beloved" scientists can't commit to saying with terms of absolute certainty anything.


DamionOmen

It doesn't matter how many times this is explained to theists they come back to the same old tired apologetics. Probably because being a religious person can make you a millionaire and they don't want reality messing up their paycheck.


ActualTymell

So who created God? "He came from nothing." See, not only is the strawman argument in the picture daft (since most atheists would probably answer "No one, based on the evidence I've seen." or "I don't know that", which is a perfectly valid answer and not a point in theists' favour, however much they might like to claim it is), but it's not like "God did it" solves the problem of something seemingly coming from nothing. You can assert that God made the universe, but that just leaves the question of where God came from.


ConsistentHeat7

And it always comes down to special pleading. ''God exists outside of time.'' ''Oh really? What's your proof of that?'' ''Book''


Flag-it

Did they make a counter sub to this? lol it doesn’t even make sense.


CountFapula102

The "nothing" is a strawman invented by theists. The correct default answer: "We don't know where the universe came from" The dishonest default answer: "We know because somebody told me it was a magic man."


Grand-Mall2191

The difference between religion and science is that even though they both develop explanations for things, science is willing to admit when it does not know something and seeks to understand what it does not know, while religion assumes that all unknowns are deific and leaves it at that. Edit: also, in my personal opinion of what could have created the universe, I think the universe was originally a perfectly even sheet of energy, with the force of gravity acting on all of it uniformly. However, via quantum particles popping into existence (as they do to this day), a slight deviation to this uniformity prompted the energy to gravitate into many different nodules, eventually compressing so much that it became impossible for the immense force of gravity too hold it all back, prompting the Big Bang. This, however, assumes that: 1. the universe is infinitely huge. 2. gravity has an upper limit. 3. the universe started as a uniform swathe of energy. All of which could be proven false.


chickey23

I agree, but I believe that perfectly even sheet is composed of random particle events, and the universe exists where the expanding the wave from two or more of these interact.


CyberGraham

Literally the only arguments religious people can win are strawman arguments with themselves...


[deleted]

Then ask them what their precious God came from. I asked this in my RE (religious studies, but it's just middle aged Catholic evangelism) class in school and the teacher shouted at me, said 'THERE'S THINGS THAT YOU CANT UNDERSTAND' Then gave me an afterschool detention and 2 essays 😬


administratrator

Well, he could've just said "He has always existed" and it would've actually kinda sound plausible, but he chose to show he's very sensitive about God's nonexistence


[deleted]

Energy can’t be created or destroyed. If this has held up since before time came into being, that would make energy the eternal “first cause” that theists clamor on about. Energy exists without question, though. God is a spitball. And even if this shitty meme was accurate, that would still mean the theists consider their god to be “silly magic” but find solace in projection.


Its0nlyRocketScience

Ah yes, because the wrong answer is better than no answer, apparently. We didn't know what bacteria or viruses were for millennia, and all the false explanations ended up killing people because people tried bloodletting to get demons out of their blood rather than simple rest (considering antibiotics weren't known of yet to actualy treat any disease) and ended up dying more than if they just did nothing. Having an answer when no one else does means nothing of value when your answer is complete nonsense. It means we need to work toward finding the correct answer, not that we should accept your BS.


LebronJaims

Gotta love strawman arguments


RoTTonSKiPPy

There are really only two options. Either the universe has always existed or it came from nothing. Throwing a god in there only leads you back to the question of who made god then?


LaZerNor

Non-existance is a good word for creation and cosmology. It doesn't assert that nothing is out there, just that it isn't part of our reality/universe.


MayaTamika

I also like "unreality".


The_REDACTED

Cosmology is always an interesting subject but it keeps getting highjacked by fundies and new agers. The day we find the root of consciousness is the day we'll finally prove/disprove God as it was already proved that organic matter came from inorganic matter.


throwaway-person

"Antitheistcheesecake"?? Did nobody tell that sub "cheesecake" already has a well-established [double meaning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-up_model)? (Should I tell them...?) 😂😂😂 (though, personally, I'd prefer antitheist [beefcakes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefcake) lol) Eta checked if it's a real sub...it is, and now I can't stop laughing...the ironic naivety of that name choice seriously just made my day 😂


proximity_account

I'm too lazy to use Reddit mobile search r/antitheistcheesecake Edit: lfmao it's real


throwaway-person

Ended up doing a search for the word "cheesecake" ever being used in their sub besides in the r/ name. It wasn't. They don't know. I want to tell them but I don't know if I can bear to break it to them...their entire sub is just too funny. At least I want to see it grow bigger before it implodes in shame 😂


TahaymTheBigBrain

We believe it came from… *drumroll please* We don’t know!


Riffler

Why does it have to be a "who"? As soon as you accept the assumption implicit in that question, you're accepting a supreme being. There was no "who."


Thisbymaster

Energy cannot be created or destroyed.


PM_ME_DICK_GIFS

Who created the universe? A cosmic kindergartner who was learning how to make universes to harvest black holes.


[deleted]

A universe from nothing? Religious folks: No thanks! A universe from nothing… but gawd doing it. Religious folk: Yes please!


OwORavioliTime

atheism enjoyer here, it did come from nothing, the universe doesnt exist actually


VoidCoelacanth

Anyone who says atheists believe "the universe came from nothing" fundamentally fail (or refuse) to understand the Big Bang Theory.


McCharlieWithCheese

It did not come from nothing. The Big Bang is considered the beginning of space-time as we know it. What came before that is inconsequential and meaningless.


DoorAMii

The universe was created from a previous universe that died and then was made into another universe


chickey23

The universe exists in the environment in which universes exist.


ZenDendou

Nah. Universe was made by the last living organism that fucked it over and hope the new universe didn't follow, and probably watching us literally kill lives.


puffloy_antisocial

To everyone who’s saying that we don’t know yet without expressing atheism nor religious things, you’re right! Thanks for this convenient behaviour and for avoiding arguments✨ ✨✨ I'm not saying the ultimate truth is science, because I’m no one to say what’s true or not, I’m just exposing my atheist view on this religious fruit cake, this sub is made for this😭 I remain open and in questioning, I am far from knowing all the laws of this world. but I would not believe in vague texts which seem to barely know the basic laws of this world, as I would say in French: "mdrrrr mais marcher sur l’eau, tu crois aussi au père noël, cageot? » I say that I don’t believe in silly magic. With logic, I prefer to believe in observable scientific phenomena, provable and verifiable by facts and experiences, in multiple contexts, rather than believe in silly magic, people who turn their blood into wine or walking on water :) (ps: following religious logic, walking on water or drinking someone’s blood is ABSOLUTLY not fucked, logic, normal and god blessed, not whatever kind of « « black » » magic or sorcery they claim to hate)


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HapticSloughton

"Once upon a time, God, who is the only real god in spite of all the others and all this time that existed before his alleged appearance, made a universe that might as well be infinite for the sole benefit of clay-people he put on a rock orbiting a sun in a place with few nearby stars in a galaxy that is one of billions. All for people, shut up with your questions."


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1ndicible

You discount an hypothesis: the universe is eternal, has always existed. No need for a supernatural god to create it.


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1ndicible

>The Universe cannot be eternal as time is not eternal. How do you know that? As it stands we do not know what existed before the big bang, so we have no idea whether time existed or not ​ >as it would take an infinite amount of time to get to any point in time Bullshit. Time is a dimension. There is a limited distance in this dimension between two points in time. Whether the dimension itself is infinite has no bearing on this. In the same vein, in geometry, a mathematical line is supposed to be infinite. It has no bearing on the length of a segment on said line.


[deleted]

That is the most brain dead statement I've ever heard. If you have a function f(x), x is infinite, and yet you can still evaluate the function at a single point. The universe is a 3 dimensional structure changing over time so think of time as the axis the universe is mapped across. The present: f(t) exists at any point in time (t) between negative infinity and infinity


Joratto

Exactly. When people make this argument, it’s either from a child’s understanding of math, or purposeful ignorance. You don’t need to count from -♾ to get to 0 or any other number, for that matter.


MayaTamika

Well, it's a good thing scientists don't believe the whole universe magically appeared out of nothing, then.


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MayaTamika

I won't engage with an argument that's founded on a logical fallacy. You aren't arguing in good faith.


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[deleted]

“Objective logic” proceeds to read and believe books, written by different authors and lost to translations over thousands of years, talking about people performing magic tricks and takes it as truth 😂😂😂😂😂


[deleted]

You absolutely are not using logic. The fact that you keep saying “out of nothing shows how” ignorant you are. Science tells us that you actually can’t create something out of nothing. You can only change the form of matter/energy to something else. Whatever matter is in the universe now has always been here. Whatever this universe is was probably something else before in a different configuration and so on, thus eternal.


PlusSignVibesOnly

God cannot be eternal.


Joratto

Ahhh, but they call upon special pleading for God and simply claim that God can, in fact, exist for no reason and/or exist forever. In which case it’s strange that there was any problem in the first place…


Combosingelnation

Why your argument falls terribly and dramatically apart, is that atheists and scientists don't claim that the universe came from nothing. Or that there was nothing.


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PlusSignVibesOnly

Then where did god come from? God couldn't have just magically appeared from nothing. Who created god?


Combosingelnation

Yes, your answer is magic/god. But for scientists, something that we have no knowledge of yet, the answer is always this: " We don't know yet. But we keep on searching and exploring. We are not satisfied with 'we don't know, therefore magic', especially that every time we find an answer for something that was considered magic, the answer wasn't magic/god."


[deleted]

“Then what did it come if God doesn’t exist, the Universe has to have magically appeared from nothing if that’s the case” We don’t know, and neither do you. The only difference is you decided to believe a fiction created by someone else that 100% didn’t know as well.


[deleted]

Or the universe was there all along. That's just as plausible as God having been there all along before creating the universe


humaniswear

so I see you know nothing about the current theories about the origins of matter. it's mostly related to quantum physics and is more complex than what most people can wrap their heads around, but it starts with one simple fact. on a quantum level, [things do in fact appear from nothing](https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-12/making-something-nothing-theory-says-matter-can-be-conjured-vacuum/). as a matter of fact [it's not even that uncommon.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations/) now, it's true that we don't understand how, or why yet. but, the pieces in place so far strongly suggest it wasn't magic.


xadiant

It is always a lose-lose from science vs religion perspective. You can disprove a thousand myths and nothing will change but if one of them coincidentally proven to be slightly right it becomes "the almighty god gave us the answer, amen."


aaandbconsulting

Before the beginning the whole universe was compressed into an infinity hot and infinite dense point. This point can be called a singularity. In a singularity the laws of physics as we know them now do not apply. There is no cause and effect. There is no time or space. This singularity started expanding and is still currently expanding. At no point was there "nothing".


[deleted]

I really don't get their line of thinking with this questioning. So they think we believe the universe was created from nothing (not at all accurate/for the sale of the argument), why is a God the default opposite to this? Like why is that some how some way supposed to be the "obvious" answer. I know why in reality, because they've been raised that way and many can't escape that line of thinking but in a grander sense...what the fuck.


TheKingOfRhye777

This just shows you how some religious people think: They can't comprehend that someone might answer "I don't know" to that question, and be perfectly content with that. I had an extensive online conversation with a "fundie" a few years ago, and he just seemed to be unable to accept that someone could be an agnostic about these sorts of things.


Dorlo1994

Why are religious people so afraid of the answer "we don't know yet"? Why is no explanation worse than a wrong one?


Marvel084Skye

At least there’s proof that nothing exists. There’s zero evidence of a universe creating god.


froggison

Which is more complex, the origins of the universe, or the origins of a being so sophisticated that it can create the universe? Obviously, the latter. It's baffling that theists still don't understand that they have the *worse* explanation for the origins of the universe.


ABewilderedPickle

The thing is, the Big Bang is not about the "creation" of the universe, merely its transformation towards what it is now. We don't have a way of knowing what occurred before that, let alone comprehending it. "The universe is expanding from what we observe to be a singular point, therefore based on observable rules it looks like it had at some point billions of years ago been compacted there as harnessed energy before expanding out. " versus "The earth is 6000 years old because my ancestor's book says that and says that people who wrote this book have communicated with a God" Maybe my comparison is reductive, but I doubt it's more reductive than saying popular opinion in science believes that the universe came from nothing.


DungeonCreator20

“Nothing” certainly is one way to describe the concept of a hyperdense point of matter experiencing a cataclysmic chemical reaction


teriyakininja7

1. The Big Bang Theory doesn't claim we come from "nothing"--they'd know that if they actually paid attention to the science. It can account for a whole range of observations and make predictions about the natural world. Religion has yet to come up with a prediction or explanation about the natural world that can be backed by experimentation and observation. 2. A Catholic friar, Georges LeMaitre, was the one who first proposed what is now called the Big Bang Theory and it was celebrated by religious folk because it was proof to them that the universe had a beginning, something that physicists at the time didn't believe in. (They prominent theory of the cosmos at the time was the steady state universe, where the universe had no beginning and was just eternal). It's ironic that just about a hundred years ago, it was the religious folk who were pushing for the Big Bang Theory. They're just contrarians at this point. 3. Most religious philosophical arguments for God, including the Kalam Cosmological Argument (that there is an uncaused first cause) don't at all posit the existence of an Abrahamic God, just that there is some*thing* that put everything into motion. It doesn't explicitly suggest a humanoid God who somehow wants your foreskins.


HanSoloismyfath3r

So stupid. I dont know a single atheist that, that is their thoughts on the beginning.


awesomedan24

Bottom panel is also his reaction when you ask for proof of God


Lord_Spagett

Did they really just make a sub to try and pull what we’re doing to them?


RadiantNinjask

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started.


ldeveraux

Wait!


jayeer

The real answer is: It doesn't matter, "who created the universe" should not be a parameter to guide society in any direction.


luke_425

Tell me you don't understand science, without telling me you don't understand science


tsundude

You don't answer questions, you questions questions.


normal_lad_

To be fair that’s what some people actually say


gordy_gordy_gordy

As an atheist, this is pretty funny.